FanDuel Sports Networks are the RSNs that were once branded Bally Sports Networks, and prior to that were part of the Fox Sports Network group. They\u2019ve gone through quite a bit of churn and change over the last few years as media companies have lurched from linear TV to streaming and several mergers have happened.<\/p>\n
According to a report by Tom Friend in Sports Business Journal<\/a>, the FanDuel Sports Networks are at serious risk of dissolving unless a previously reported sale to sports streaming platform DAZN<\/a> closes by January. The news comes as Main Street missed a December rights payment to the St. Louis Cardinals. The company\u2019s 29 combined franchises between the NBA, NHL, and MLB are similarly at-risk of missing rights payments in the coming months.<\/p>\n Per Friend, if the DAZN purchase does not close, Main Street will \u201cwind down and dissolve\u201d the FanDuel Sports Networks at the end of this year\u2019s NBA and NHL regular seasons, though the NBA is seemingly preparing for a scenario in which the company could fold in the middle of this season.<\/p>\n This is a big, big deal for the NBA and NHL teams covered by these RSNs, because obviously those teams are in the middle of their seasons. Here, though, we are concerned with the nine MLB teams whose games were on FanDuel Sports Network channels in 2025. This chart shows which channels are scheduled to cover each MLB team\u2019s games in 2026:<\/p>\n As you can see, FanDuel Sports Network covers three of the Cubs\u2019 NL Central rivals. In addition to the Cardinals, as noted above, Brewers and Reds games are also on those channels.<\/p>\n Before I get to what might happen next, a couple of notes on that infographic.<\/p>\n This missed payment is serious business and there is no guarantee that DAZN, a sports streaming platform based in the UK, will complete any purchase of the FanDuel networks.<\/p>\n If they don\u2019t, the rights of the nine teams noted above would revert to MLB. As MLB has done with the six teams whose games they currently produce (those are listed in the infographic under \u201cESPN,\u201d which made a deal with MLB to produce those team\u2019s games), they would likely begin to stream games for those nine teams, along with some sort of local cable\/satellite\/OTA broadcast version for those who don\u2019t want to stream. Generally those deals have cost about $20 per month.<\/p>\n That would make half of the MLB teams\u2019 local broadcast rights owned by the league. And that plays right into Commissioner Rob Manfred\u2019s plan, which is to (he hopes) get all the local rights owned by MLB by the end of 2028. That is when all the league\u2019s national TV deals expire, and Manfred thinks more money could be made by selling the local and national rights all in one package. The scary thing is, Manfred might actually be right about that.<\/p>\n The issue then becomes: How do you convince teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Cubs \u2014 all of whom have partial or complete ownership of their local RSN \u2014 to give up those rights to the league? Putting all the local rights in one package would likely mean dividing them equally among the 30 teams, and I\u2019m pretty sure you can see how that would be a non-starter for teams like the Dodgers and Yankees.<\/p>\n So this isn\u2019t just a thing that affects the nine FanDuel Sports Network-affiliated teams. It could, and probably will, affect everything that has to do with baseball broadcasting. It is likely going to be a topic of discussion at labor negotiations next winter. There is no easy answer.<\/p>\n As always, we await developments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FanDuel Sports Networks are the RSNs that were once branded Bally Sports Networks, and prior to that were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,40817,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-490543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-mlb-broadcasts-telecasts","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115768614143507973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}