Sports Business Journal reported on Monday afternoon that the Detroit Tigers, along with nine other major league teams, have cut ties with Main Street Sports, the parent company of FanDuel Sports Network. Of those nine, the Atlanta Braves are currently the only club planning to start their own regional sports network (RSN).
Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported that the Tigers, Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals,
and the Tampa Bay Rays, are all leaving FanDuel Sports Network.
All of them other than the Braves are expected to move to MLB, where games will be streamed on MLB TV or the MLB app with a subscription. The terms of such a subscription remain to be seen. Will your normal MLB TV subscription that comes with blackouts of home games simply remove the blackouts? Or will it take a specific “home team” subscription? We have questions, and Grapefruit League action is only a few weeks away.
Of course, teams have seen this coming, so hopefully most of the planning is already arranged. The Tigers, who canceled their previous contract with Main Street back on January 8, have notably hired radio and tv play-by-play announcers Dan Dickerson and Jason Benetti as team employees. That moves was in anticipation of something like this happenign, and so their status was kept separate from the regional sports networks. The broadcasts should at least sound and look basically the same in whatever format is arranged.
However, unlike most MLB clubs, the Tigers ownership also owns and operates the Detroit Red Wings, so there’s always been talk of simply putting together a Detroit sports RSN on their own and bringing the Pistons along as well if Tom Gores is on board.
For now, Friend reports that the Tigers are going to MLB media to produce their broadcasts and stream games, and like the other clubs excluding the Braves, will look for local distributors to keep games on local cable packages. So for 2026 we’re going to have to adapt to that. But beyond the Pistons’ and Red Wings’ current broadcast contracts there may be an opportunity to develop a Detroit sports network. Currently this seems like the unlikely outcome of the two long-term, so if people want it they better make their feelings known.
Meanwhile, sources said NBA and NHL teams are in a business-as-usual holding pattern, with the sense that Main Street still plans to air their games the rest of the regular season and simultaneously attempt to negotiate deals beyond this year. A resolution with those leagues is expected to play out over the next two weeks.
At the same time, sources said those NBA and NHL teams did not receive their recent February rights fee payments on Sunday, and it is unclear whether future payments will be reduced by 20% or more — or even arrive at all.
Either way, we’re unlikely to be consulted, so you might as well have your say here. Considering the number of sports fans and the prices of streaming services, I personally haven’t been able to unpack why Diamond Sports and now Main Street Sport Group, can’t get their act together, regardless of declining ad revenues. Maybe a different company could create a more viable RSN. Maybe the Detroit teams doing it together would work out. Or, maybe the simplest solution is to simply let each team handle its own broadcast, stream games themselves, and try to do better by being able to customize everything to their individual markets.
What’s your preference for sports going forward? Would you prefer to simply buy yearly broadcast subscription through the individual teams you follow on their websites/apps? Or do you follow all three teams and prefer an Ilitch/Gores fusion to create a Detroit sports RSN covering all three sports to simplify things?
