Main Street Sports Group has missed its January payments to numerous undisclosed NBA teams, sources told SBJ today, as its delicate sale to DAZN and uncertain future has now trickled from MLB to pro basketball.<\/p>\n
In December, Main Street missed a payment to the St. Louis Cardinals<\/a>, which triggered a Dec. 18 phone call from the NBA league office to all 13 FanDuel Sports Network teams — alerting them that their January payments were in jeopardy. That prediction turned out to be prescient, when several of the NBA teams, if not all 13, did not receive their scheduled rights fee payments these past few days.<\/p>\n Sources said default notices have likely already been sent to Main Street by the league\u2019s primary law firm Proskauer and that a 15-day cure period will begin once the default notices are formally received. In the interim, Main Street will continue to produce this month\u2019s games on its FanDuel Sports Networks for the 13 teams: the Hawks, Hornets, Cavaliers, Pistons, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Heat, Bucks, T\u2019Wolves, Thunder, Magic and Spurs.<\/p>\n Main Street has not yet responded to a request for comment. <\/p>\n In another development that could be fortuitous for the NBA franchises, sources believe those 13 teams had safeguards written into their Main Street contracts that line them up to be primary payees from Main Street\u2019s creditors should the business eventually collapse.<\/p>\n As of today, sources said Main Street still owes the 13 teams about $180M this season, and Main Street\u2019s ongoing sale to DAZN is the obvious impediment keeping them from receiving their checks. Sources said the deal is purportedly contingent on several matters outside of Main Street\u2019s control, with some sources believing that DAZN wants to secure all the teams\u2019 digital rights and will potentially ask teams to accept lower rights fee payments.<\/p>\n If the sale does not close this month, sources said Main Street will wind down and shutter its business at the conclusion of the NBA and NHL seasons, with a goal of not interrupting game broadcasts until then.<\/p>\n If DAZN does close the deal, it conceivably could be business as usual, outside of a brand name change. But three teams\u2019 Main Street contracts end after this season (the Grizzlies, Hornets and Magic), and most of the other teams\u2019 deals expire in 2027, making it even more likely the NBA launches a national streaming RSN <\/a>for the 2027-28 season on a platform such as Amazon, YouTube, Apple, Peacock or the ESPN app.<\/p>\n With the national streaming RSN hanging over Main Street\u2019s head, its ties to the NBA \u2014 not to mention other leagues \u2014 were already teetering. Sources said Main Street\u2019s creditors wanted 1M paid direct-to-consumer subscribers by the end of 2025, and reports had that number at 650,000 at mid-year, far below expectations. \u201cTheir creditors are getting tired,\u201d one NBA team source said.<\/p>\n Either way, the thought of having games broadcast on DAZN gave many of those 13 NBA teams pause. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was a serious call with the league [back on Dec. 18],\u201d one source said. \u201cProskauer was on the call, and DAZN\u2019s investment was kind of poo-pooed, not as a big thing. They only have like 500,000 subscribers in the U.S. … And then of course DAZN is interested in buying the team\u2019s rights of which they don\u2019t really control…nor would the league really say it was a pathway forward. [If Main Street shutters], the league, as always, is very prepared to do streaming<\/a> [on their NextGen platform] as well as linear production on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n MAIN STREET SPORT GROUP\u2019S 2025-26 NBA RIGHTS FEE PAYMENTS:<\/p>\n Atlanta Hawks: $32M* Charlotte Hornets: $16.57MCleveland Cavaliers: $34M*Detroit Pistons: $25.78MIndiana Pacers: $17.47MLos Angeles Clippers: $34.59MMemphis Grizzlies: $11.41MMiami Heat: $55M*Milwaukee Bucks: $24M*Minnesota Timberwolves: $24.88MOklahoma City Thunder: $16.67MOrlando Magic: $26.19MSan Antonio Spurs: $19.92M<\/p>\n *This year\u2019s contracts were extended at roughly the same numbers as their 2024-25 deals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Main Street Sports Group has missed its January payments to numerous undisclosed NBA teams, sources told SBJ today,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[402,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-389837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}