{"id":579818,"date":"2026-04-12T13:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/579818\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T13:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:42:14","slug":"what-will-timberwolves-and-wild-do-now-that-fanduel-sports-north-is-set-to-shutter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/579818\/","title":{"rendered":"What will Timberwolves and Wild do now that FanDuel Sports North is set to shutter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Timberwolves\u2019 game against New Orleans on Sunday at Target Center won\u2019t just be the last game of the regular season. It also will mark the end of an era for how fans have watched the team.<\/p>\n

The game will be the Wolves\u2019 last to be televised by a Regional Sports Network that started as Midwest Sports Channel in the late 1980s before becoming Fox Sports North in 2001 and more recently operating under the Bally Sports and FanDuel Sports North banners. <\/p>\n

The Wild\u2019s departure from FanDuel will come once their first-round series is complete and the NHL moves all of its playoff games to national platforms. The Lynx also will have games shown elsewhere when the WNBA season opens next month.<\/p>\n

The demise of the FanDuel networks doesn\u2019t comes as a surprise given the well-documented financial difficulties the previously bankrupt Diamond Sports Group and rebranded Main Street Sports Group have been through in recent years. (Bally\u2019s and FanDuel had naming-rights deals with Diamond and Main Street, respectively.) The Twins jumped ship before last season and became one of numerous teams to partner with MLB on their own streaming platform that also can be seen on certain cable and satellite providers.<\/p>\n

The move from getting a check from its television rights-holder to going to a subscription-based streaming service has cost the Twins a large chunk of revenue. Diamond Sports Group was paying the Twins $54.8 million per season as recently as 2023. Twins owner Tom Pohlad said that last season Twins.TV had 50,000 signups, meaning that at $99.99 per subscriber the Twins would have generated about $5 million in revenue. There likely was more revenue than that for the team, but it certainly didn\u2019t approach the 2023 figure.<\/p>\n

The Wolves and Wild also figure to face significant reductions in rights-fees. But the question for fans is where this might be headed and how will they be impacted? Let\u2019s take a look:<\/p>\n

WHO WILL CARRY THE WOLVES AND WILD?<\/p>\n

The Wolves and Wild have known for a few years that FanDuel Sports North was likely going away so this doesn\u2019t come as a surprise, but it will create a busy offseason considering how long Main Street Sports Group attempted to hang on.<\/p>\n

Main Street carried numerous MLB, NBA and NHL teams on its various FanDuel networks throughout the country, but it became clear the end was near this winter when it began missing payments to multiple teams.<\/p>\n

Sports Business Journal recently reported that many NBA franchises could switch to local over-the-air channels or create their own in-house networks that figure to follow what the Twins and MLB have done with streaming.<\/p>\n

Whatever happens for 2026-27 with the Wild and Wolves it\u2019s likely to be short term. The NBA is urging its clubs to only do one-year deals, or packages that include an exit clause after one season, according to SBJ. That\u2019s because the league might not launch a national streaming platform until the 2027-28 season.<\/p>\n

Sources told SBJ that the Wolves are considering a streaming-only agreement that also would include the WNBA\u2019s Lynx. This could be done through a platform such as DAZN or Victory+, which already has worked with NHL teams.<\/p>\n

So where is this headed? The same place MLB is hoping to go. Having a service such as DAZN, Amazon or YouTube TV become the home of a national streaming hub for the league. The question for all leagues is how many teams will agree to go to a centralized hub? The Lakers in the NBA and Dodgers and Yankees in MLB have little incentive to leave their current RSNs considering they receive enormous rights fees that they get to keep all for themselves. <\/p>\n

Best guess is that for at least one season, the Wolves, Lynx and Wild will end up with a combination of a streaming platform and having some games on an over-the-air provider such as FOX 9+ or KSTC (Ch. 45). The Wolves already have a small package of games on NBC affiliate KARE (Ch. 11) and the Wild have a similar deal with KSTC.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also likely that any over-the-air games also would be available on the streaming platform as that is where the primary focus is going for the NBA and NHL.<\/p>\n

OK, BUT WHAT\u2019S THE COST?<\/p>\n

Get 20% off for 1 year<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Timberwolves\u2019 game against New Orleans on Sunday at Target Center won\u2019t just be the last game of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-579818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579818","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=579818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}