Sources: At least 6 teams to leave Main Street Sports, join MLB

At least six teams are expected to leave their regional sports network, Main Street Sports, and join Major League Baseball, essentially shedding their once-lucrative local-media contracts, sources told ESPN on Monday. More are expected to follow.

The Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Tampa Bay Rays have decided they will partner with MLB, which will produce their games for the 2026 season and beyond. The Cardinals, Royals and Brewers have formally announced the transition.

The Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels and Detroit Tigers, the remaining baseball teams in Main Street Sports' portfolio, have yet to announce their plans, though a report from Sports Business Journal said the Angels and Tigers will also join MLB. In a statement, the Braves said they are "well on our way towards launching a new era in Braves broadcasting," adding that they will be "sharing our path forward in the coming weeks."

On Jan. 8, all nine of Main Street Sports' baseball teams terminated their contracts as the company scrambled to find a buyer while in the midst of more financial turmoil -- just one year after it emerged from a lengthy bankruptcy proceeding. Those teams promised to continue negotiating with the company but, with spring training approaching, gave them until the end of the month to resolve its situation. The departures seem to indicate that the RSN provider might be headed toward a liquidation, though previous reports stated it would continue to broadcast NBA and NHL games through the end of those leagues' seasons.

Main Street, which broadcasts its games under the name FanDuel Sports, began the year with 29 NBA, NHL and MLB teams in its portfolio.

"FanDuel Sports Network is continuing to broadcast NBA and NHL games, and we appreciate the leagues' engagement in ongoing discussions on our go-forward plans," a spokesperson for Main Street Sports wrote in a statement. "We appreciate the relationships we have had with these MLB partners and their fans over many years, and we wish them the best."

MLB -- which hopes to possess the local rights for all 30 of its teams by the end of 2028 and sell them as a national package, a process that would help to eliminate blackouts -- also holds the rights to the Arizona Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners and Washington Nationals.

Two years ago, MLB installed a local-media department to handle RSN turmoil in the wake of massive cord-cutting rates throughout the country. Under that scenario, MLB broadcasts games, negotiates cable and satellite distribution agreements, generates advertising revenue and makes local streaming available through MLB.tv -- owned by ESPN under a new media-rights agreement -- for teams that fall off their local-media contracts.

That arrangement, though, does not come close to matching the value generated from traditional cable deals, which account for 20% to 30% of team revenues and are basically valuable they're a source of fixed, reliable income. The potential loss of that revenue for nine additional teams could have a major impact on spending in the near future, further exacerbating payroll-disparity concerns as the linear-cable model continues to crumble.

In 2024, MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to use some of the money generated from luxury tax overages to help fund teams that took local-media losses up to $15 million. That, however, was only a one-time occurrence.

Main Street was once Diamond Sports Group, a subsidiary of Sinclair that took on nearly $9 billion of debt to purchase 21 regional channels from Fox, pushing it into bankruptcy in March 2023. Twenty-two months later -- after several missed payments, continual angst, bitter court battles and a three-month period in which Comcast pulled its channels off the air -- the company emerged from bankruptcy.