The Regional Sports Network Is Dying. The Grizzlies Just Showed What Comes Next.

Rapid Response / Legal Alert | September 14, 2026

The Memphis Grizzlies are not simply changing television networks.

They are replacing the basic business model that used to sit between an NBA team and its local fans.

Beginning with the 2026–27 season, DAZN will become the Grizzlies’ primary local direct-to-fan home under a multi-year agreement announced September 10, 2026. The platform will carry all four preseason games and all 78 regular-season games currently available for local distribution, alongside team-produced programming and select Memphis Hustle games. Fifteen regular-season games will also be available free on DAZN and simulcast over the air—the most free local Grizzlies games since the franchise’s first season in Memphis.

The bigger story is what replaced the regional sports network.

Not another regional sports network.

Instead, Memphis is assembling a local-media product out of direct subscriptions, free broadcasts, team content, premium viewing features, and ticket-holder benefits.

That may be where local sports television is headed.

The Grizzlies’ new arrangement is built around a dedicated team environment inside DAZN.

A standard Grizzlies package costs $19.99 per month or $119.99 for the season. Premium versions cost $24.99 monthly or $139.99 per season and add features including multiview, alternate feeds and camera angles. Grizzlies season-ticket members receive the standard season pass at no additional charge.

That bundling matters.

A season ticket is no longer merely admission to FedExForum. It now includes the team’s principal local digital-media product.

DAZN will also carry pregame and postgame coverage, extended highlights, condensed games and Grizzlies-produced programming through Grind City Media. Select games from the team’s G League affiliate, the Memphis Hustle, are part of the package as well.

The geographic footprint remains unusually large: Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, central and southern Illinois, and eastern Arkansas.

And the shift follows necessity as much as experimentation.

Last season, the Grizzlies’ local games aired through FanDuel Sports Network. Main Street Sports Group, which operated those RSNs, informed NBA and NHL clubs earlier this year that it would wind down operations after their seasons, leaving Memphis and numerous other teams searching for new local-media homes.

Memphis did not rebuild the old structure.

It chose something different.

Direct-to-consumer sports streaming itself is not new. FanDuel Sports Network already sold streaming subscriptions, and NBA League Pass has long offered out-of-market games.

The meaningful change is which product sits at the center of the local relationship.

The old structure generally looked like this:

Team → RSN → cable/satellite distributor → fan.

The rights holder paid the team. Distributors paid the network. Fans received the channel through a larger television bundle.

The emerging structure looks more like:

Team + streaming platform → fan.

Then free television, advertising, premium features, tickets, merchandise and original programming can be layered around that relationship.

Memphis is not alone. DAZN has also struck local arrangements with the Pacers and Cavaliers and is serving as the Magic’s direct-to-consumer partner alongside Orlando’s separate over-the-air distribution.

That makes the Grizzlies deal less an isolated experiment than another data point in a rapidly developing NBA media model.

There is no new statute or NBA rule that suddenly moved the Grizzlies to DAZN.

This is primarily a media-rights and licensing transaction.

The NBA’s media ecosystem divides rights by both territory and distribution category. National partners control certain nationally distributed games. Local partners receive rights to games available within a club’s regional territory. NBA League Pass generally serves the out-of-market audience.

That territorial structure remains intact.

NBA League Pass still applies local and national blackouts in the United States because local and national media partners hold exclusive live rights in their respective windows. Locally blacked-out games generally become available on League Pass on demand after the applicable delay.

So the DAZN deal does not abolish the NBA’s local-rights system.

It changes the company and business model operating inside it.

And there is another important qualification: although the Grizzlies describe DAZN as their exclusive local home, 15 regular-season games will also be simulcast over the air. In practical terms, this is a hybrid system, not a streaming-only lockbox.

For decades, the most attractive feature of the RSN business was certainty.

A network could pay a team a large fixed annual rights fee because cable distributors were sending the network monthly affiliate fees from millions of households—including plenty of people who never watched the games.

Cord-cutting broke that machinery.

Once fewer households support the bundle, the local sports business has to answer a much harder question:

How much is an individual fan actually willing to pay to watch one team?

The Grizzlies’ answer starts at $119.99 for the season.

But the deal suggests teams are asking another question too:

What else is that direct relationship worth?

A registered streaming customer can be much more commercially useful than an anonymous cable household.

The subscription relationship can potentially connect viewing behavior with ticket offers, merchandise, promotions, sponsorship activation and other fan products. The Grizzlies are already visibly connecting those pieces: season-pass buyers can receive ticket promotions, premium subscribers receive a merchandise discount, and season-ticket members receive streaming access.

The agreement does not publicly disclose the parties’ data-sharing rights, so it would be premature to say the Grizzlies themselves receive DAZN’s full subscriber dataset.

But that undisclosed term is exactly why data rights should now be viewed as part of the economics of local-media contracts.

In the RSN era, the prize was largely the rights fee.

In the direct-to-consumer era, the prize may also include knowing the customer.

Putting 15 games on free television might appear inconsistent with trying to sell subscriptions.

It may actually be essential.

Paid streaming monetizes the most committed fans. Free television keeps the product visible to casual viewers, younger fans, lower-income households and people unwilling to add another subscription.

Those free games can function as customer acquisition.

Watch a game free. Follow the team. Buy tickets. Buy merchandise. Eventually buy the season pass.

That is a fundamentally different way of valuing a broadcast audience.

A game no longer has to maximize subscription revenue by itself if it increases the value of the broader fan relationship.

The Grizzlies deal does not mean the RSN model has vanished everywhere.

Local NBA distribution is becoming more fragmented, not less. Different teams are experimenting with different combinations of over-the-air television, streaming platforms, legacy networks and league-supported distribution.

It also does not mean local blackouts are gone. NBA territorial restrictions still matter, and League Pass remains principally an out-of-market product in the United States.

Nor do we yet know whether the new arrangement is financially superior to the Grizzlies’ old RSN economics.

The announcement does not disclose:

Those numbers will ultimately tell us whether the model is merely more flexible—or more profitable.

The most important number to watch is not 78 games.

It is subscribers.

If Memphis can convert a meaningful percentage of its regional fan base into paying direct customers while preserving reach through free broadcasts, the arrangement gives other teams a blueprint.

If subscriptions remain modest, teams may discover why guaranteed RSN checks were so attractive in the first place.

Also watch DAZN.

The platform now has local relationships with multiple NBA franchises and has been expanding its U.S. sports distribution footprint. The more teams it aggregates, the more valuable DAZN becomes to fans—and potentially to the NBA itself as the league continues reconsidering the future of local distribution.

The RSN did one thing exceptionally well: it turned local games into predictable checks.

Whatever replaces it has to do more.

It has to distribute the games, monetize the audience, keep casual fans reachable, sell premium experiences, collect useful customer relationships and fit around the NBA’s national-rights structure.

The Grizzlies’ new deal is an early picture of what that replacement can look like.

Local sports media is becoming less about owning a television channel—and more about owning the relationship with the fan.