The end has long been in sight, but it is now all-but-official that the Main Street Sports Group RSNs will be winding down its operations in the coming weeks.
Main Street Sports Group, operator of the FanDuel Sports Network RSNs, is “preparing to wind down” its operations upon the end of the ongoing NBA and NHL seasons unless the company can “reach a strategic transaction,” a spokesperson told Sports Media Watch Thursday. Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal was first to break the news. The Main Street RSNs will air NBA games through the end of the regular season and NHL games through the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, meaning the company has about five more weeks left before it will begin shutting down.
According to Friend, Main Street has already lost “many” staff members, with a “skeleton crew” left behind for the remaining weeks.
While the statement left open the possibility of a last-minute reprieve, there is no indication that Main Street is any closer to finding a buyer than when this process began late last year. Per Friend, the company’s primary suitor DAZN has been contacting NBA teams independently as it seeks to establish itself as a viable option for the league’s eventual centralized RSN model. All indications are that if DAZN enters local sports broadcasting, it will be doing so on its own.
No other company ever emerged as a serious bidder for Main Street, at least not publicly.
Dissolution has been a foregone conclusion since Main Street lost its bread-and-butter Major League Baseball rights earlier in the year. All nine teams with Main Street deals exited their contracts, and while one of those teams — the Angels — still plays on a “FanDuel Sports Network” RSN, that is only because they already had joint ownership of the network and bought out Main Street.
The Angels were one of two teams who opted to assume ownership of their media platform, along with the Braves — who launched “BravesVision” ahead of the season. The other seven chose to cede production and distribution of their games to the league, as it prepares to centralize its local broadcasts as part of its 2028 media rights negotiations.
The NBA has a similar plan that has long been expected to launch in the 2027-28 season. While it was reported earlier this year that the league was considering expediting that process to as soon as next season, Friend reported Thursday that the topic did not come up at a recent Board of Governors meeting and that teams are operating under the assumption that 2027-28 is still the target.
The NBA teams who will be inevitably leaving Main Street after this season — 13 total — would have to find a short-term option to bridge the gap between the end of Main Street and the start of a centralized option. A handful of NBA teams have left Main Street in recent years, most of them opting for a ‘beam and stream’ model that includes games on over-the-air broadcast television and direct-to-subscriber streaming. But Friend, citing sources, reported that there is “a sense” some teams could choose streaming-only options next season, specifically mentioning both DAZN and Victory+.