The Regional Sports Network Is Dead. The Replacement Is a Stack, Not a Channel.

Strategic Analysis | September 14, 2026

For most of the regional-sports-network era, a team could answer five different business questions with the same three letters.

Who produces the game?

Who distributes it?

Who sells the ads?

Who pays the team?

Who worries about whether enough people actually watch?

The RSN.

That arrangement was enormously valuable because it transformed a messy local-media business into something resembling an annuity. The team licensed its local rights. The network paid a large guaranteed fee. Cable and satellite distributors carried the channel. Millions of households paid for it inside the bundle, including plenty of people who rarely watched the team.

Then the bundle started breaking.

Diamond Sports Group went through bankruptcy. Its successor, Main Street Sports Group, eventually told its remaining NBA and NHL partners that it would wind down after the 2025–26 seasons, freeing another large group of franchises to find new local-media arrangements.

What has followed is often described as the shift from cable to streaming.

That description is too simple.

The more important change is that the functions once bundled inside the RSN are being separated from one another.

One company can produce the game. Another can put it on free television. Another can sell a direct subscription. Amazon or DAZN can aggregate the stream. A league can provide the technical infrastructure. The team can sell the advertising. Everyone can argue over who gets the customer data.

The RSN is not being replaced by another channel.

It is being replaced by a media stack.

And the strategic question for teams is no longer simply, “Who will pay the most for our television rights?”

It is: Which parts of the fan relationship are we willing to give away in exchange for guaranteed money?

That is a much bigger question.

The Memphis Grizzlies’ new agreement with DAZN makes the transformation unusually easy to see.

Beginning with the 2026–27 season, DAZN will become the Grizzlies’ local direct-to-fan destination across the team’s seven-state territory. It will carry all four preseason games and the 78 regular-season games currently available for local distribution, along with Grizzlies-produced programming and select Memphis Hustle games. At least 15 regular-season games will also be available free, including over-the-air simulcasts.

The paid product starts at $19.99 per month or $119.99 for the season. Season-ticket holders receive access. Premium tiers add features including multiview and alternative feeds.

That does not look much like the classic RSN.

But Memphis is not simply “going direct.”

DAZN is still an intermediary.

The difference is what kind.

A regional cable network depended heavily on wholesale distribution through cable and satellite systems. DAZN depends on individual digital accounts, connected televisions, subscriptions and platform distribution.

The Pacers have moved into a similar DAZN structure. Orlando is using DAZN for direct-to-consumer streaming while separately distributing games over the air through Cox Media Group stations.

That is one emerging model:

paid streaming aggregator + free reach + team content.

But it is far from the only one.

Look across the NBA, NHL and MLB and the most striking fact is not convergence.

It is experimentation.

The Detroit Pistons moved their locally available games to Scripps-owned TV20 beginning in 2026–27, returning the team to free over-the-air television.

The Miami Heat are distributing non-national games free on WPLG Local 10 and through the station’s streaming app.

The Charlotte Hornets are putting non-national games on WSOC and TV64, again emphasizing free over-the-air access.

The Pelicans use Gray Media’s 14-station Gulf Coast Sports & Entertainment Network for free regional television while selling Pelicans+ as a separate direct-to-consumer subscription.

The Suns pair local television with Suns+, a $14.99-per-month direct streaming product.

The Thunder now sell Thunder+ directly through the NBA App, making locally available games accessible inside the league’s own digital environment.

Hockey provides still more variations.

The Anaheim Ducks have made local games available free through Victory+ and extensive over-the-air distribution.

The Dallas Stars pioneered a free, ad-supported Victory+ model and have now added another enormous distribution pipe: beginning in 2026–27, local Stars games will also be available to Prime members inside the team’s regional territory at no additional charge.

Amazon is going further. Prime Video announced a multi-year arrangement making it a local streaming home for six NHL teams beginning this season: Carolina, Anaheim, Columbus, Dallas, Minnesota and St. Louis.

The NHL is therefore beginning to produce something that looks like local-rights aggregation at national-platform scale.

Baseball is moving differently.

Major League Baseball itself now produces and distributes local games for 14 clubs, while all 30 teams have some form of direct-to-consumer in-market streaming option.

And then there are teams moving in the opposite direction—toward greater internal control.

The Atlanta Braves launched BravesVision in 2026 and now oversee production, sales, marketing and distribution themselves.

The Texas Rangers created an entire sports-media company and Rangers Sports Network to control production and distribution.

The Angels purchased the network that previously carried their games and now operate it themselves.

Same problem.

Very different answers.

That is because teams are not merely choosing a television provider anymore.

They are choosing which pieces of the media business they want to own.

The conventional discussion focuses on distribution.

The more important thing the RSN provided was risk transfer.

Imagine a team had local media rights worth roughly $50 million under a long-term RSN agreement.

The team did not necessarily care whether the network ultimately sold enough advertising, maintained enough subscribers or negotiated favorable enough carriage fees to justify paying $50 million.

That was the network’s problem.

The team received the contractual rights fee.

In other words, the RSN was not just a television station.

It was effectively a financier of local sports rights.

That distinction matters because the post-RSN models increasingly put some of the operating risk back onto the team.

If a club launches its own subscription product, somebody must answer:

The upside is greater control.

The downside is that control comes with volatility.

That is why the old model remains attractive in theory. A large guaranteed check is a wonderful business model.

The problem is that a guarantee is only as good as the company writing it.

Main Street’s deterioration illustrated the credit risk hidden inside the old arrangement. Clubs found themselves dealing with missed or reduced payments and ultimately another collapse of the intermediary on which their local-media economics depended.

So the strategic calculation has changed.

Teams are not comparing:

Guaranteed money versus risky direct revenue.

They are comparing:

Guaranteed money from a potentially fragile intermediary versus diversified revenue plus greater control.

That is a much closer call.

One of the strangest consequences of the streaming revolution is that rabbit ears suddenly look innovative.

For years, sports moved behind increasingly expensive pay-TV walls because scarcity maximized rights fees.

Now franchises are rediscovering something obvious:

A fan who cannot watch the team is difficult to monetize later.

Free over-the-air distribution therefore should not be viewed as surrendering revenue.

It can be customer acquisition.

The Hornets, Heat, Pistons, Pelicans, Golden Knights and Ducks are all using substantial free television distribution in their local strategies. Vegas will again make its regional Scripps broadcasts available over the air in 2026–27 while also offering streaming through KnightTime+.

The logic is especially compelling for younger teams, rebuilding teams and markets trying to create generational fandom.

A paid subscription maximizes immediate revenue from the committed fan.

A free broadcast maximizes the number of people who might become committed fans.

Those are different objectives.

The old RSN tried to accomplish both with one channel.

The emerging market can price them separately.

Some games can be free.

Some can sit behind subscriptions.

Some can become national exclusives.

Some can serve as promotional events.

Teams are beginning to treat distribution less like a single rights sale and more like a portfolio.

There is another difference between the RSN era and direct digital distribution that may matter even more over time.

Digital viewers identify themselves.

Victory+ requires an account even though Stars games are free. Suns+ runs through an authenticated digital subscription. Thunder+ uses NBA ID. DAZN subscriptions require their own customer accounts.

That means the distributor can potentially know much more than “someone in Cleveland watched Channel 43.”

It can know that a particular customer:

That information can influence advertising, sponsorship, ticket sales, merchandise, retention and personalized offers.

But there is an important legal and commercial caveat:

The existence of customer data does not mean the team owns it.

Who may collect, access, combine, export, retain and monetize subscriber information depends on the contracts between the team, platform, league, ad-tech providers and other vendors—plus the privacy laws applicable to the data.

That makes data rights a media-rights issue.

A sophisticated local-rights agreement increasingly should answer questions that barely mattered during the cable era:

Who owns the subscriber relationship?

Can the team export customer records?

Can the platform market unrelated products to those fans?

Can the team combine viewing data with ticketing data?

What happens to the data when the contract ends?

Who bears responsibility for privacy notices, consent and security?

Those terms may never appear in the press release.

They can nevertheless determine whether the team has actually built a direct-to-consumer business—or merely rented someone else’s customer base.

Digital distribution also exposes how strange the old geographic system has become.

There is no technical reason a stream cannot cross a county line.

The restrictions exist because media-rights contracts divide games into exclusive packages.

NBA League Pass still blacks out a fan’s local team because local providers retain exclusive rights. National exclusives are also unavailable through local packages.

MLB’s newer direct products show another possible direction. For clubs whose local distribution is handled by MLB, the league offers in-market subscriptions that eliminate the traditional local blackout for those subscribers, subject to national exclusivities.

That distinction matters.

Blackouts are not fundamentally a technology problem anymore. They are a rights-allocation problem.

They become simpler only when the parties controlling those rights are willing—or able—to sell them differently.

As long as local rights, national rights, cable rights, streaming rights and territorial exclusivity remain carved into separate contracts, some form of viewing restriction will survive.

Baseball may be offering the clearest preview of where this ends.

MLB is now producing local broadcasts for 14 clubs and distributing direct subscriptions across a much broader group. The Mariners, for example, shut down ROOT Sports and moved production and distribution under MLB beginning in 2026 while maintaining cable, satellite and direct streaming access.

That provides economies of scale.

One league can operate streaming infrastructure, authentication, production systems, advertising technology, customer service and distribution negotiations more efficiently than 30 separate clubs building everything themselves.

The NBA appears to be developing a version of the same infrastructure layer. Products such as Thunder+, Suns+, Pelicans+ and others can live inside or connect to NBA digital architecture, while the teams retain distinct local brands and commercial arrangements. The league now operates a storefront directing consumers toward the relevant local subscriptions.

That suggests a likely endpoint:

centralized infrastructure, decentralized economics.

The league handles the plumbing.

The team keeps its local brand, sponsorship relationships, pricing choices and some meaningful portion of the commercial upside.

Platforms like Amazon and DAZN can then sit above that infrastructure as aggregators.

That is very different from the old RSN.

It is closer to an operating system.

There is a temptation to assume that leagues eventually should collect every club’s local rights and simply sell one enormous national package.

That might be efficient.

It is not legally automatic.

The Sports Broadcasting Act gives the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB a limited antitrust exemption allowing leagues to pool certain rights in the “sponsored telecasting” of games.

But it is not a blanket exemption for every commercial arrangement a league might create.

And the Supreme Court’s decision in American Needle v. NFL remains an important warning against casually treating separately owned clubs as one economic entity whenever they jointly license valuable rights. The Court held that NFL teams could constitute separate economic actors when collectively licensing their independently owned intellectual property, meaning their conduct could be tested under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

How those principles apply to particular future streaming structures would depend on the structure, rights involved and asserted competitive justification.

The point is narrower:

league centralization is a business strategy with an antitrust architecture, not merely a technology decision.

Regulators are also paying attention to the broader sports-media transition. The FCC opened a proceeding this year specifically asking how streaming, fragmentation, local sports rights and exclusive arrangements are affecting broadcasters and consumers. It asked, among other things, what rights are being transferred in sports agreements, how local television stations are obtaining sports content and how market changes are affecting consumer costs.

Congress held a separate June hearing examining the Sports Broadcasting Act itself.

The next media system is therefore being built under increasing regulatory scrutiny.

There is a reasonable objection to all of this.

Perhaps the market is not really decentralizing.

Perhaps it is simply searching for the next aggregator.

Amazon can collect multiple NHL teams.

DAZN can collect multiple NBA teams.

MLB can centralize production.

The NBA App can host multiple local subscriptions.

Eventually, one or two platforms may achieve enough scale that consumers again buy a bundle containing many local sports properties.

At that point, haven’t we just reinvented the RSN?

Partly.

Aggregation is inevitable because consumers do not want 14 separate apps.

But the architecture matters.

The old RSN commonly combined production, distribution, financing and customer access inside one regional intermediary. If that intermediary failed, the entire relationship could fail with it.

A modular system makes those layers separable.

The Rangers offer a particularly useful illustration. Texas formed Rangers Sports Network to control its own production and distribution architecture. Victory+ initially served as its direct-to-consumer distributor. In July 2026, the club changed DTC distributors to BZZR while Rangers Sports Network remained intact.

That is what modularity looks like.

The stream can change without rebuilding the entire media company.

For teams negotiating the next generation of deals, that flexibility may be worth real money.

The most important post-RSN negotiations therefore may not concern the headline rights fee.

They will concern control.

Teams should care about:

Production rights. Who owns the broadcast feed, archives and shoulder programming?

Distribution flexibility. Can the team simultaneously use OTA, cable, streaming and future platforms?

Data access. Who owns and may use subscriber information?

Advertising inventory. Which party sells local ads, digital ads and sponsorship integrations?

Pricing control. Can the team set subscription pricing, free-game strategy or promotional bundles?

National carveouts. What happens when a league partner takes a game exclusively?

Platform performance. What service levels, uptime obligations and remedies apply?

Assignment and change of control. Can the distributor sell the deal to someone the team never chose?

Payment protection. What happens after a missed rights-fee payment?

Termination rights. How quickly can a team reclaim its games if the distributor falters?

The last two questions should look considerably more important after Diamond and Main Street.

A ten-year media-rights contract is not merely a valuation of games.

It is a ten-year bet on the counterparty.

Not one thing.

The likely winning local-media model combines several things the old system treated as alternatives.

Free television for reach.

Paid direct streaming for committed fans.

Large platforms for convenience and aggregation.

League technology for scale.

Team-controlled production and content where ownership creates value.

Traditional cable carriage where customers still want it.

And eventually, smarter commercial use of authenticated fan relationships across media, tickets, sponsorship and merchandise.

The precise mix will differ by market.

A Yankees-scale property can make choices that a small-market NHL franchise cannot.

A club with its own production operation can tolerate risks that another team may prefer to outsource.

A rebuilding franchise may rationally prioritize reach over short-term subscription revenue.

A championship contender may be able to monetize a premium DTC product immediately.

There will not be one answer because the underlying economics are not the same.

But the strategic direction is becoming clearer.

The RSN is not literally extinct. YES, NESN, Altitude, SportsNet Pittsburgh and other regional operations still exist in various forms.

What is dying is the assumption that the default local-media strategy should be:

hand everything to one regional cable network in exchange for the biggest guaranteed check available.

The new system asks teams to make harder choices.

Take the guaranteed money or keep the upside.

Charge every fan or use free games to grow the audience.

Own the production or outsource it.

Build an app or join an aggregator.

Centralize with the league or protect local autonomy.

Sell the rights—or build a business around them.

For years, teams treated the broadcast as a product they licensed to someone else.

The next era is likely to treat it as the front door to the entire fan economy.

And that is why the most important question after the death of the RSN is not where the game will be shown.

It is who will own the relationship when the fan presses play.