After seemingly landing on stable — if not solid — ground, the RSNs now known under the banner of “FanDuel Sports Network” are back to the brink.
Main Street Sports Group, owner of the FanDuel Sports Network RSNs, will “wind down and dissolve its business” at the end of the NBA and NHL seasons unless it is able to complete a sale to DAZN, Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported Sunday. The company has already missed a rights fee payment to the St. Louis Cardinals, Friend reported, and NBA teams were informed on a call this week that a combined $180 million in payments for January and beyond “might not arrive.”
DAZN is in “advanced talks” to acquire a majority stake in Main Street Sports Group, Lauren Thomas of The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. But Friend characterized the sale talks as “last-ditch” and “in limbo,” with Main Street reportedly unable to meet certain conditions set by DAZN.
The NBA, which accounts for a plurality of Main Street’s major league rights deals, has told teams that it will step in to produce and distribute games in the event that the company shuts down. The league has long planned to obtain rights to as many local teams as possible in order to sell or distribute those games via a centralized platform. Between the 13 teams with Main Street deals and nine others who have ‘beam and stream’ arrangements or own their own RSNs, Friend put the number of teams potentially available as soon as next season at 22.
Major League Baseball has already begun that process, having taken over production and distribution for six clubs in the past two years and packaging in-market streaming rights to those games in its recent deal with ESPN. Assuming some or all of the teams with Main Street deals — the Angels, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Rays, Reds, Royals and Tigers — choose to have their games produced and distributed by MLB as well, ESPN could end up holding in-market streaming rights to nearly half of the U.S.-based MLB teams.
