Six teams leave RSN Main Street to join MLB

Six teams officially left their regional sports network, Main Street Sports, and joined Major League Baseball on Monday, essentially shedding their local-media contracts.

The Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Tampa Bay Rays have decided they will partner with MLB, which will produce their games for the 2026 season and beyond, as first reported by Puck’s John Ourand.

The Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels and Detroit Tigers, the remaining baseball teams in Main Street Sports’ portfolio, have yet to announce their plans, though a report from Sports Business Journal said the Angels and Tigers will also join MLB. In a statement, the Braves said they are “well on our way towards launching a new era in Braves broadcasting,” adding that they will be “sharing our path forward in the coming weeks.”

On Jan. 8, all nine of Main Street Sports’ baseball teams terminated their contracts as the company scrambled to find a buyer while in the midst of more financial turmoil — just one year after it emerged from a lengthy bankruptcy proceeding. Those teams promised to continue negotiating with the company but, with spring training approaching, gave it until the end of the month to resolve its situation. The departures seem to indicate that the RSN provider might be headed toward a liquidation, though previous reports stated that it would continue to broadcast NBA and NHL games through the end of those leagues’ seasons.

Main Street, which broadcasts its games under the name FanDuel Sports, began the year with 29 NBA, NHL and MLB teams in its portfolio.

“FanDuel Sports Network is continuing to broadcast NBA and NHL games, and we appreciate the leagues’ engagement in ongoing discussions on our go-forward plans,” a spokesperson for Main Street Sports wrote in a statement. “We appreciate the relationships we have had with these MLB partners and their fans over many years, and we wish them the best.”

MLB — which hopes to possess the local rights for all 30 of its teams by the end of 2028 and sell them as a national package, a process that would help to eliminate blackouts — also holds the rights to the Arizona Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners and Washington Nationals.

Two years ago, MLB installed a local-media department to handle RSN turmoil in the wake of massive cord-cutting rates throughout the country. Under that scenario, MLB broadcasts games, negotiates cable and satellite distribution agreements, generates advertising revenue, and makes local streaming available through MLB.tv — owned by ESPN under a new media rights agreement — for teams that fall off their local media contracts.

That arrangement, though, does not come close to matching the value generated from traditional cable deals, which account for 20% to 30% of team revenues and are a source of fixed, reliable income. The potential loss of that revenue for nine additional teams could have a major impact on spending in the near future, further exacerbating payroll-disparity concerns as the linear cable model continues to crumble.

In 2024, MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to use some of the money generated from luxury tax overages to help fund teams that took local-media losses up to $15 million. That, however, was only a one-time occurrence. That was only a one-time occurrence, though seven of the nine teams that could lose their Main Street Sports deals — all except the Angels and Braves — receive revenue sharing and could be eligible for a portion of luxury-tax payments, which totaled about $400 million for the 2025 season.

Main Street was once Diamond Sports Group, a subsidiary of Sinclair that took on nearly $9 billion of debt to purchase 21 regional channels from Fox, pushing it into bankruptcy in March 2023. Twenty-two months later — after several missed payments, continual angst, bitter court battles and a three-month period in which Comcast pulled its channels off the air — the company emerged from bankruptcy.

By Jan. 2, 2025, the company had secured a new naming rights deal, retained a robust portfolio across three leagues and signed a commercial agreement with Amazon. There was hope for sustained operations — but those did not last even a whole year. Sports Business Journal reported in late December that Main Street Sports had missed a payment to the Cardinals and that it was pitching a last-ditch sale to streaming and entertainment platform DAZN to save its business.

That deal with DAZN eventually disintegrated. More missed payments followed, prompting all MLB teams to shed their previous deals. Another investor seemingly has not emerged.

Main Street Sports currently owns local rights for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons, Minnesota Timberwolves, Orlando Magic, Milwaukee Bucks, San Antonio Spurs, LA Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies. In the NHL, the Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets and St. Louis Blues.