First things first: “(Baseball) fans are going to have the games” on TV this year, says Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, according to The Associated Press.
With Opening Day just 11 weeks away, reports say the Reds and eight other teams — the St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, Atlanta Braves, Miami Marlins, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels and Tampa Bay Rays — have terminated their contracts with Main Street Sports Group, which operates the regional FanDuel Sports Networks.
It’s another chapter in the Reds TV rights drama dating back three years to the bankruptcy filing by Diamond Sports Group, which operated the Reds and other teams’ regional sports networks, then known as Bally Sports. (The company rebranded as Main Street Sports Group and FanDuel Sports Network a year ago, after it emerged from bankruptcy.)
The Reds have dropped FanDuel twice in the last 15 months. The club announced in November 2024 that Major League Baseball would produce and distribute Reds games. Two months later, the Reds reversed course in January and reached a new deal with FanDuel for the 2025 season which included a new direct-to-consumer steaming option “to give fans throughout the Reds regional TV territory access to its Reds coverage with no local blackouts.”
However, the deal was canceled after FanDuel did not make its December payment to the Cardinals, AP sportswriter Ronald Blum says. “More missed payments followed,” the Sports Business Journal has reported. It did not name the teams.
Manfred promised that all MLB fans will see their games on TV this season at a Jan. 8 press conference about MLB’s volunteering for charities as part of the United States’ 250th birthday on July 4.
"No matter what happens, whether it's Main Street, a third party or MLB media, fans are going to have the games," Manfred said.
As regional sports networks collapsed due to cable TV cord-cutting, Major League Baseball created a MLB Local Media division in 2023. It has stepped in to produce and distribute games for the San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks (2023), Colorado Rockies (2024), Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins (2025) and Seattle Mariners (2026).
In fact, the Reds could have been the first team where MLB took over their telecasts. MLB was prepared to take over the Reds TV network on May 6, 2023, if Diamond Sports Group did not pay the club its rights fee for Bally Sports Ohio. Spectrum and Altafiber cable systems were preparing to move the Reds to another channel on May 6 if the TV rights reverted back to the team. But Diamond Sports Group paid the Reds in time.
The Reds and the eight other teams could reach new deals with Main Street for this season, ESPN says. The Reds start the season Thursday, March 28, with the Boston Red Sox here for Opening Day.
Or they could switch to MLB, which has usually retained the teams' TV announcers.
"Our focus, particularly given the point in the calendar, is to maximize the revenue that's available to the clubs, whether that's MLB Media or third party," Manfred said Jan. 8. “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.”
Manfred said local media provides more than 20% of industry revenue, according to the AP’s Blum.
ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez says that “under a local media department installed in response to RSN turmoil two years ago, 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 especially valuable because 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 this offseason, further exacerbating payroll-disparity concerns as the linear-cable model continues to crumble,” Gonzalez says.
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