{"id":474872,"date":"2026-02-18T01:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474872\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T01:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:06:07","slug":"dazn-already-beginning-meetings-with-nba-nhl-teams-departing-main-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474872\/","title":{"rendered":"DAZN already beginning meetings with NBA, NHL teams departing Main Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAZN this week is beginning to engage directly with the 13 NBA and seven NHL teams that are part of Main Street Sports Group about whether there is a path toward local media rights deals in the future, sources tell SBJ. <\/p>\n

My colleague Tom Friend reported earlier today<\/a> that Main Street has initiated its legal pathway to a winddown on Friday, meaning those NHL and NBA teams, like the MLB teams that just left<\/a>, would need homes for next season and beyond. <\/p>\n

DAZN was in talks with Main Street about investing in the complete company, but that broader deal never materialized. DAZN still sees these local rights as a strong way to dig deeper into the U.S. sports market. The company already has international league-level relationships with both the NBA and NHL. It operates NHL TV globally, while broadcasting the NBA in markets such as Spain, Belgium and Germany. DAZN also operates NFL Game Pass outside the U.S. and airs most of ESPN\u2019s college sports programming outside the U.S. through an ESPN sublicense.<\/p>\n

There has also been outreach to those leagues\u2019 media operators about DAZN\u2019s planned talks, with the NBA\u2019s Bill Koenig<\/a> and NHL\u2019s David Proper being kept in the loop, sources said. It\u2019s been noted that the NHL and NBA \u2014 like MLB \u2014 likely will pursue a path of rolled-up regional rights, and the sources pointed out that DAZN would like to be involved in those types of future league conversations.<\/p>\n

DAZN has hired Range Sports Media Advisory to engage with the NBA and NHL teams on potential rights acquisitions. David Sternberg will lead Range\u2019s talks.<\/p>\n

DAZN has no minimum threshold of teams it seeks to acquire as it begins talks, and the configuration of potential packages would likely reflect many seen in the market, with a mix of streaming and local over-the-air components. Sources said DAZN is confident in its product and what it feels it can offer teams in the long term beyond just streaming, such as analytics, ticketing data, stats and scores. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAZN this week is beginning to engage directly with the 13 NBA and seven NHL teams that are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[37769,355,385,99],"class_list":["post-474872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-dazn","tag-nba","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474872","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=474872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}