The question for Main Street Sports Group — operator of the FanDuel Sports Network RSNs — would seem to have shifted from whether it can find a buyer to whether it can survive to the end of the NBA and NHL seasons.
Main Street Sports Group as of late Friday appeared almost certain to permanently lose rights to the nine Major League Baseball teams who opted out of their contracts earlier this month, a move that would likely ensure that the RSN owner will go out of business either imminently or after the ongoing NBA and NHL seasons, according to Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal.
Friend wrote early Friday that Main Street could file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and “immediately liquidate” as soon as next week, but followed that up later in the day by reporting that its loss of MLB rights could free up enough financial resources to remain afloat through April. Main Street has reportedly pledged to finish out the current seasons, though the NBA and NHL teams have been described as skeptical and pursuing contingency plans.
Main Street is expected to let the NBA and NHL teams know by next week whether it will be able to remain functioning through the rest of the season. But even in the circumstance where it is able to do so, the rights fees it pays to those leagues are expected to drop by more than 20 percent. As might go without saying, a reduced rights fee would still be preferable to none at all.
It was just over a year ago that Main Street appeared to finally be on solid ground after exiting a prolonged bankruptcy period. But after missing a rights fee payment to the MLB Cardinals last month, the company’s prospects have been in apparent freefall.
There were discussions of a potential sale to DAZN, but Friend reported Friday that the London-based streamer is now weighing whether to wait for Main Street to collapse and then pursue local team rights independently. It is not clear just how realistic the DAZN option was in the first place; John Ourand of Puck characterized talks between Main Street and DAZN as having gone “nowhere.” And while multiple reports indicate that Main Street has told teams it is in talks with a “mystery buyer” — to use Ourand’s wording — it is hard to imagine the company getting bailed out this late in the game.
