After a brief stay of execution, Main Street Sports Group has seemingly finally admitted defeat in its battle against bankruptcy and will bow out of the regional sports network (RSN) space in April.
The RSN model has been hugely lucrative for Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA). But changing consumption habits, technological advances, and a rapidly-shifting media landscape have undermined the economics the traditional local rights relationship.
The RSN isn’t dead yet but the death knell for the largest operator is forcing teams and leagues to identify a new balance between reach and revenue fit or the era of digital broadcasting.
Why is Main Street closing and what happens now?
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Local sports have long been perceived as a key selling point for the traditional cable bundle, allowing RSNs to extract higher carriage fees from distributors who feared the impact on their business if they did not carry these channels. This demand, and competition between rival RSNs in some markets, allowed teams to secure lucrative local media rights deals.
There are now as few as 65 million pay-TV households in the US – down from a peak of more than 100 million in the early 2010s – as consumers flock to more flexible, affordable streaming video services. This shift means lower carriage fees, which makes it more difficult, if not impossible, for RSNs to service debts and make payments.
The start of this shift coincided with a major business development in the RSN space. As per the terms of its acquisition of 21th Century Fox in 2019, Disney was obligated to sell the Fox Sports Network of RSNs. Sinclair purchased the unit for US$10.6 billion and rebranded it as Diamond Sports Group (DSG). But within four years, DSG had filed for bankruptcy protection and sought to renegotiate its contracts on more sustainable terms.
Although some teams voluntarily left their arrangements, DSG secured revised deals with leagues and teams it wanted to keep and ditched others, such as the San Diego Padres and Cincinnati Redsit saw as less valuable
A slimmed-down DSG exited bankruptcy protection in January 2025, rebranded as Main Street, signed up a new title sponsor with betting form FanDueland devoted significant resources to its DTC streaming service.
Despite a distribution deal with Amazon Prime Video and adding 650,000 streaming subscribers in eight weeks, Main Street was unable to overcome secure enough customers to overcome the impact of cord cutting.
Although DAZN and Amazon had been linked with acquiring Main Street in recent years, no serious takeover bid emerged. The writing was on the wall in January 2026 when nine MLB teams exited their deals with Main Street after missed payments, and it is now expected that FanDuel Sports Network will cease broadcasting at the end of the 2025/26 NBA and NHL regular seasons in April.
Main Street is expected to close its doors at the end of the 2025/26 NBA and NHL season (Image credit: Getty Images)
What does this mean for Main Street’s teams?
Main Street owned the local media rights for 29 MLB, NBA and NHL franchises when it emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2025. All will have to find new homes for their games and address ant revenue shortfall.
Few, if any, alternatives will be as lucrative as a traditional RSN – at least in the short term. However, splitting with Main Street at least ends the uncertainty over its future and opens the possibility of wider availability on digital platforms, providing greater exposure and new monetisation opportunities.
Some teams who have split with their local media partner have opted for a combination of free-to-air (FTA) and subscription-based direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming distribution, while others have partnered with other teams and launched their own RSNs.
The most immediate and perhaps significant impact of Main Street’s demise will be on MLB. Baseball is arguably the sport most exposed to RSN disruption given its teams are disproportionately more reliant on local media revenues than teams in other leagues which have more valuable national television deals.
MLB’s lengthy 162-game regular season, its relatively unchallenged summer schedule, and the fact that most of its games have local appeal rather than national interest, mean teams have been able to secure favourable financial terms with RSNs.
The nine MLB teams who parted ways with Main Street in January have decided the uncertainty is no longer worth the guaranteed financial payments and have opted to go it alone.
Eight have handed over production and distribution responsibilities to MLB’s local media division while the Atlanta Braves have launched their own television network and DTC service. In addition, the Los Angeles Angelswho co-owned FanDuel Sports Network West RSN, have bought out Main Street to assume full control of the RSN.
With the 2026/27 NHL and NBA seasons not starting until September, their affected teams have more time to make alternative arrangements. More details will likely emerge in the summer, but two NHL teams have already started planning.
The Detroit Red Wings plan to launch a new RSN with MLB’s Detroit Tigerswith MLB handling production, and the Los Angeles Kings will appear on the Angels’ RSN.
The Atlanta Braves are launching their own RSN in ‘BravesVision’, taking production of local broadcasts in-house (Image credit: Getty Images)
What does this mean for the major leagues?
MLB has been preparing for this moment for some time. Its in-house media division was formed in 2023 as a direct response to Main Street’s troubles and commissioner Rob Manfred has made no secret of his ambition to centralise as many rights as it can to increase the value of its national media deals when they come up for renewal in 2028.
The league will produce matches for 15 teams next season, while another seven have made their games available to MLB’s streaming platform through their RSN partner. Additionally, ESPN is integrating out-of-market broadcasts into its DTC offering and offering in-market game passes.
The grand vision could be to offer all in-market and out-of-market games in a single package in the future.
The NHL has also said it is prepared to take over production and distribution capabilities for any teams without a deal next season and has suggested that more games could be included in future national contracts. Indeed, NHL’s out-of-market NHL.TV DTC service is already integrated into ESPN+ as part of its current arrangements.
The NBA’s growing national profile and US$76 billion media deals mean it is more immune to the impact of RSN closures. It is building a streaming hub for local games that could launch as early as next season, with Amazon, YouTube TVDAZN and ESPN all said to have held talks to house the service.
The National Football League (NFL), which airs all its matches nationally, is unaffected, as is Major League Soccer (MLS) abandoned the RSN model through its league-wide US$2.5 billion deal with Apple TV in 2023. The Minnesota Lynx are the only Women’s National Basketball Association (NBA) team to have Main Street as their senior local broadcast partner.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is keen to centralise teams’ local rights to offer as part of a wider package (Image credit: Getty Images)
What about other RSNs?
Other media giants are seeking to exit the RSN space. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) sold or shut down its AT&T SportsNet stations, while Comcast, which operates NBC-branded RSNs in Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia is also seeking a way out. Should the four NBC stations be shuttered, this would mean more local NBA rights for the league to centralise.
More successful are RSNs owned or part-owned by teams, such as YES Network, MSG Networks, and NESN, and several teams are convinced these remain viable.
Space City Home Network, home to the Houston Astros and Houston RocketsChicago Sports Network, which airs Bulls and White Sox games, have launched in recent years, alongside the planned new services in Atlanta and Detroit.
What is the future of local sports broadcasting in the US?
The RSN model has been hugely successful and lucrative for several decades but is no longer sustainable in the digital era of broadcasting.
The good news is that local sport remains popular and that the future is wide distribution across pay-TV, streaming and over-the-air (OTA) broadcast platforms that reach fans wherever they are.
Greater availability will increase subscription revenue, increase and deepen fan engagement, and unlock new revenue generation opportunities, such as advertising or ticket sales, which ensures diversified income streams.
There will also be more bundling of local and national rights, increasing centralised revenue for the leagues and helping teams find their audience in a crowded media landscape. Partnerships with major sports platforms such as Amazon Prime, DAZN, and ESPN, all of which have significant reach and established billing relationships with customers, will be hugely valuable.
Cord cutting and the rise of streaming have necessitated a major rethink in how live sport is made available to American viewers. But there is opportunity in futureproofing this relationship.
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