Major League Baseball announced that it will take over the broadcasts of six new teams in 2026, including the Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds.

These are six of the nine clubs that terminated broadcast agreements with Main Street Sports, which leaves the Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers and Atlanta Braves as teams that need to formalize their broadcast plans for this season.

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The issue is with Main Street, which was previously known as Diamond Sports Group and operated under the Bally Sports logo. The company was in bankruptcy for most of 2023 and 2024, according to Darragh McDonald of MLBTradeRumor.com, which reported the latest development, and in 2024 the company switched to FanDuel Sports branding.

After that they missed payments to multiple teams, which is why the nine teams terminated their deal with the company as MLB redid its overall media right deal. When the deal with Main Street/Diamond/Bally/Fanduel collapsed, teams got a payment that was based on streaming numbers rather than a guaranteed payment.

This model had a direct impact on what happened on the field, with teams like the San Diego Padres and Minnesota Twins having to lower their payroll as a partial result of the different business model. McDonald named the deals for outfielder Juan Soto and third baseman Carlos Correa as deals that may have been impacted by the lower payments.

ESPN has stepped in as part of its revamped deal with MLB and announced that it will be acquiring the local rights for several of those teams, and it was also reported in recent months that the Seattle Mariners and Washington Nationals would be moving to the MLB model. With three teams remaining, including he Angels, MLB could get to more than half the league with its MLB TV model.

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For commissioner Rob Manfred, this is part of the plan, at least temporarily. Manfred wants to market a streaming package like MLB TV minus the local blackouts that currently apply, but expanding the plan will be difficult given that most of the larger clubs still have their own deals with broadcast entities like YES for the Yankees and other analogous networks.

Teams like the Cardinals and Marlins have already announced streaming prices, but the Red were reportedly reluctant to sign players like third baseman Eugenio Suarez until they figured out their broadcast situation. Given how little the Angels have spent to acquire players, it’s not unreasonable to think this uncertainty is affecting their ability to spend as well, although owner Arte Moreno is also an automatic factor in this.