On Thursday afternoon, nine major league teams, including the Detroit Tigers, terminated their contracts with FanDuel Sports, per Evan Drellich of The Athletic.
We’ve seen this show before, of course. FanDuel’s
parent group, Main Street Sports, was formerly the Diamond Sports Group. As Diamond went through bankruptcy from 2023-2025, teams terminated their deals with the now defunct Bally Sports under Diamond, but ultimately renegotiated those deals.
With Main Street Sports now under threat of going into bankruptcy as well, the termination of contracts is ultimately the nine teams away of avoiding getting caught up in those proceedings. Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred informed reporters in New York on Thursday that the league is ready to take over those broadcasts and move them to MLB Media should the teams decide that’s in their best interest.
In the meantime, reports have emerged in recent weeks that Main Street has already missed payments to the Cardinals and the Marlins. The spector of getting caught with no broadcast revenue no doubt hastened the decision from teams to end their contracts and start re-evaluating how they can best generate broadcast revenue for the 2026 season and beyond.
The nine teams who have ended their contracts and will either move elsewhere or renogiate once Main Street’s status become more clear are the Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays
The Tigers have already taken some defensive steps to protect themselves, such as signing play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti as a team employee rather than a FanDuel one.
Sports Business Journal reported recently that DAZN’s proposed deal to buy Main Street and the FanDuel Network is on thin ice.
“Meanwhile, sources indicated Main Street’s talks with DAZN are all but extinguished, due to teams’ reluctance to meet key conditions. Those sources said Main Street/DAZN wanted teams in the NBA and NHL to extend their deals through the 2028-29 season, including digital rights, something the teams and the leagues appear whole-heartedly against.“
FUBO has emerged as another possibility to buy the network, but that’s based on unconfirmed reports and there’s no way to know how likely that is to actually happen.
And so, the Tigers and many other teams are once again in limbo, with a major revenue stream threatened. That will no doubt have some impact on the host of top free agents left unsigned, and agents may well be trying to wait for the situation to be resolved so that teams can accurately project their revenue for 2026 before bidding on free agent talent.
The notion of simply moving all these teams to MLB and handling all the broadcasts there without the normal blackouts seems more and more like the clearest path forward, even if it doesn’t happen this year.
Drellich quoted Manfred’s comments in his piece, illustrating that while a move to MLB is available to these teams, they’re still trying to figure out the best way forward for 2026 and beyond.
“The clubs have control over the timing. They can make a decision to move to MLB Media because of the contractual status now. I think that what’s happening right now clubs are evaluating their alternatives. Obviously, they’ve made significant payroll commitments already and they’re evaluating the alternatives to find the best revenue source for the year and the best outlet in terms of providing quality broadcasts to their fans.”
Of course, we’ve seen this show before, with the teams ultimately re-signing deals with FanDuel Sports. For now, keeping their options open is the obvious move to avoid entanglement in any legal battles around Main Street, but if those issues are resolved to teams’ satisfaction, things may go right back to business as usual, at least for another year or two.
