The end of the line for the FanDuel Sports Network RSNs could be as soon as the end of this month.
The Major League Baseball teams that last week terminated their contacts with Main Street Sports Group — operator of the FanDuel Sports Network RSNs — have said they will “almost certainly end their relationship for good” unless the company is able to secure a buyer by the end of this month, Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported late Wednesday. Per Friend, “intermediaries” for the NBA and NHL teams who remain under contract with Main Street have expressed similar sentiments.
Both Friend and Evan Drellich of The Athletic reported Wednesday that Main Street submitted revised proposals in recent days to its partners in all three leagues. Drellich wrote that the teams were believed to be “mulling” the offers, and per both reports there was at least some appetite among MLB teams to continue with Main Street if it were able to get on solid ground.
But the end-of-the-month ultimatum is a “clear” sign that the new proposals “were likely not airtight enough to sway the teams back,” according to Friend.
Main Street has been asking teams to commit to multi-year rights extensions that include delayed and reduced rights fees and a 50-50 profit sharing agreement, terms that the leagues “were unilaterally against,” per Friend.
Should the MLB teams opt to leave Main Street permanently, Drellich reported Wednesday that the “simplest” scenario given the “short notice” is that they opt to have their games produced and distributed by Major League Baseball. Currently, there are seven teams whose rights are controlled in-house by MLB, the Diamondbacks, Guardians, Mariners, Nationals, Padres, Rockies and Twins. The Nationals officially joined the list Wednesday.
Adding the nine Main Street teams would result in MLB producing and distributing games for more than half the league, 16 teams in total.
In the MLB media rights deals struck last fall, Disney-owned ESPN acquired the digital in-market distribution rights to any local broadcasts controlled by MLB. While it will own those rights starting this season, ESPN is not expected to begin distributing the games via its app until 2027. Coincidentally, that will mark ten years since the RSNs were originally sold by previous owner 21st Century Fox to Disney as part of a broader transaction.
Disney was forced by government regulators to divest the RSNs, resulting in their sale to Sinclair and eventual bankruptcy. At the time, the RSNs held the rights to 15 MLB teams. It will have taken a decade to get there, but ESPN is now poised to own local in-market rights to more MLB teams than if Disney had been able to keep the RSNs.
