{"id":471156,"date":"2026-02-25T12:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T12:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/471156\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T12:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T12:55:10","slug":"st-louis-sports-team-leaders-discuss-media-futures-at-nsf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/471156\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Louis sports team leaders discuss media futures at NSF"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. LOUIS — Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III didn\u2019t feel the need to use industry jargon to sugarcoat what has been on his mind when asked during a panel Tuesday morning at the SBJ National Sports Forum about the biggest challenge facing his franchise.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Changing media landscape\u2019 is sort of a euphemism for \u2018rights fees are going down,\u2019\u201d DeWitt said. \u201cSo, you\u2019ve got a declining revenue stream that you have to navigate.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeWitt took the stage for a panel with his fellow local team leaders, St. Louis City SC owner Carolyn Kindle and Blues President & CEO Chris Zimmerman, a portion of which focused on the franchises\u2019 various media outlooks given the impending wind down of Main Street Sports Group<\/a> and its FanDuel Sports Midwest channel.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals have opted into MLB\u2019s league-operated local broadcast solution<\/a> for the 2026 season, which includes traditional pay-TV distribution and direct-to-consumer streaming. DeWitt estimated on stage that the team\u2019s local media revenue will be roughly $18M-$20M lower in 2026 than in 2025.<\/p>\n

DeWitt also said the Cardinals remain in conversation with the Blues about potentially collaborating in the future on their local media strategies. The Blues will finish out the 2025-26 NHL season with FanDuel Sports Midwest but are also trying to figure out what comes next.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were both together on [FanDuel Sports\u2019] direct-to-consumer streaming offering, which is a monthly fee if you don\u2019t still have the cable bundle, we found that being with [the Blues] reduced churn in the offseason,\u201d DeWitt said. \u201cSo, we\u2019re looking at how maybe we could think about that in a new model, but it\u2019s very up in the air obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zimmerman didn\u2019t go into specifics about what the Blues\u2019 next move might be, but he noted that both his team and the Cardinals draw strong local ratings relative to other teams in their respective leagues, due in large part to the loyalty of St. Louis sports fans. Given that interest locally, he is confident both teams will be able to continue to monetize those rights.<\/p>\n

Media is also on Kindle\u2019s mind, though the situation is different for her MLS club than her local counterparts. MLS recently reworked its deal with Apple to fold games into the primary Apple TV content offering but also shortened the agreement by three years. Kindle said there\u2019s an understanding among MLS brass that the league needs more robust linear distribution in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cMLS also realizes that there does need to be something other than just Apple, if I can be honest,\u201d Kindle said. \u201cBecause there are, to your point, still people that want to watch TV in a traditional way or watch a match in a traditional way. So, I think we\u2019re open to anything and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS — Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III didn\u2019t feel the need to use industry jargon to sugarcoat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5120],"tags":[6034,71,5,560,8154,4,4514,534,84,917,8151,5285,5284],"class_list":["post-471156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-louis-blues","tag-baseball","tag-blues","tag-hockey","tag-mlb","tag-mls","tag-nhl","tag-soccer","tag-st-louis","tag-st-louis-blues","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-st-louis-city-sc","tag-stlouis","tag-stlouisblues"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116131379514868681","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}