{"id":2194,"date":"2026-01-30T16:09:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T16:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/?p=2194"},"modified":"2026-01-30T16:09:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T16:09:25","slug":"regional-sports-network-looks-to-be-at-end-of-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/sports-media\/regional-sports-network-looks-to-be-at-end-of-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Regional Sports Network Looks To Be At End Of Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

The saga of a set of regional sports networks appears to be at the end, and it’s not looking like the ending they were hoping for.\u00a0 Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal<\/em><\/a> reports that Main Street Sports Group, the owners of the channels that make up FanDuel Sports Network, could begin liquidation as early as next week after not being able to find a buyer for its properties.<\/p>\n

Friend says that unless someone swoops out of nowhere to bail out Main Street, the broadcaster “could have little choice but to file for Chapter 7 [bankruptcy,]” leaving 29 teams in Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL scrambling without a home for their broadcasts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regional Sports Network Has Struggled Since Being Cut Loose<\/h2>\n

Main Street Sports Group has had a history of struggles to try and make a go of things since leveraging itself to buy the regional sports networks that were cut loose under the Fox Sports banner.\u00a0 As Diamond Sports Group, they spent nearly $10 billion dollars to purchase 21 regional networks in 2019.\u00a0 But by 2023, the over-leveraging landed them in federal court to undergo Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.\u00a0 The company emerged from bankruptcy at the start of 2025 with a smaller debt load, the rights to 29 teams across three U.S. sports leagues, and two new deals with Amazon and FanDuel.\u00a0 But by the end of the year, Friend reported that Main Street was again in money trouble, and was looking for a buyer.\u00a0 British streaming service DAZN was reported to be interested in buying Main Street<\/a>, but it would have been contingent on teams accepting smaller rights fees than even what was agreed to in bankruptcy proceedings.\u00a0 The network reportedly missed its December rights payment to the St. Louis Cardinals and January payments to as many as 13 NBA teams, with sources telling Sports Business Journal that Main Street could wind down operations at the end of the NBA and NHL seasons.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the nine MLB teams that still had rights deals with Main Street (the Braves, Reds, Tigers, Royals, Angels, Marlins, Brewers, Cardinals, and Rays) terminated their television rights deals with Main Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The saga of a set of regional sports networks appears to be at the end, and it’s not looking like the ending they were hoping for.\u00a0 Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reports that Main Street Sports Group, the owners of the channels that make up FanDuel Sports Network, could begin liquidation as early as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":2197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[414,238,266],"tags":[434,75,409],"class_list":["post-2194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dazn","category-sports-media","category-networks","tag-fanduel-sports-network","tag-featured","tag-main-street-sports-group"],"modified_by":"Steve Carney","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2194"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions\/2198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}