The Cardinals’ uncertain broadcast situation and the future of league-wide TV and streaming rights

The Cardinals recently opted out of their local-broadcast contract after a missed payment, and this leads to a discussion of the future of media rights and how that future might help St. Louis

The ongoing cord-cutting movement and the Regional Sports Network asset bubble it helped create continue to afflict Major League Baseball in general and the Cardinals in particular. Back in December, we learned that the Main Street Sports Group – parent company of FanDuel Sports – missed its December rights payment to the Cardinals, and in January they didn’t pay the Marlins. That’s probably not a full list. Whatever the specifics, the Cardinals and the eight other MLB clubs under the FanDuel broadcast umbrella earlier this week opted out of their contracts, as was their right pursuant to those missed payments.

Main Street Sports had been emerging from bankruptcy under its old name, Diamond Sports Group, and was counting on new ownership — including a possible sale to international streamer DAZN — to stabilize the business. That transaction, however, appears to be unlikely. Add it all up, and it’s easy to understand why these nine teams doubted Main Street’s capacity to meet their obligations in 2026. They’re just not willing to risk unpaid rights fees, and they’re likewise not willing to risk getting ensnared in another glacially paced bankruptcy proceeding should Main Street have to resort to that yet again. So the Cardinals, Tigers, Reds, Royals, Angels, Brewers, Marlins, Rays, and Braves are all now free agents of a different sort (teams ranked in descending order of how I feel about them).

First and foremost, there’s effectively no risk of Cardinals games not being broadcast in 2026. They have options, including going back to Main Street under amended terms, shopping their rights to other interested parties, or joining the other teams that already let MLB handle their streaming. On that latter point, MLB has been producing Padres broadcasts since May of 2023, the Diamondback since July of that same year, the Rockies since 2024, and the Twins and Guardians since last season. The Mariners will join their ranks for the upcoming season. The infrastructure is in place, and new teams can obviously be onboarded very quickly. From the fan standpoint, the specifics of which streaming platform you’ll use to watch Cardinals games in 2026 are less important than the knowledge that, current uncertainty notwithstanding, you will be able to watch Cardinals games in 2026.

The second consideration is that this is yet another likely blow to the club’s revenue base. The Cardinals were already dealing with a 23% reduction in local rights fees relative to what they would’ve been owed under the original FoxSports Midwest contract, and now they may be poised for another reduction in the bucks they get from that space. That’s a concern, of course, but at least it comes at a time when the club was already in a state of financial retrenchment. That’s to say, another layer of rights-fees uncertainties isn’t going to keep the DeWitts from spending big on the market this offseason or next. They weren’t going to do that in the first place.

There’s another layer to this, which is frankly more interesting to me than what happens in the near-term. This newfound “freedom” for the Cardinals and those eight other squadrons plays into MLB’s desire to gain control of the broadcast rights for all 30 teams by 2028, when these Main Street contracts would’ve expired anyway. At that point, MLB and commissioner Rob Manfred intend to shop those 30 teams’ local broadcast rights as a single centralized package, which would in essence make them a national package. If that comes to pass, then blackouts will go away or be greatly reduced in frequency; the viewing process would be theoretically simplified; and, most importantly, broadcast revenues at the local level will probably be shared equally among all 30 teams.

Presently, each team’s local-media rights are part of the local revenue bundle that also includes things like ticket sales and parking and concession revenues. Teams contribute 48% of those local revenues to a central fund, which is then dispersed equally to all 30 franchises. Local-broadcast rights make up the largest chunk of those local revenues. This all gives clubs with lucrative and thus far stable broadcast contracts incentive to hide those revenues, which is something they’re quite good at doing. That’s another discussion, but it’s relevant. Anyhow, if you lump team broadcast revenues in with the national-broadcast revenues that cover things like the ever-growing postseason, the All-Star Game, the Home Run Derby, Sunday Night Baseball, and a select handful of other regular season contests, then you get an income stream that adds up to almost half of the league’s total revenues. The upshot is that much more of the league’s revenues would be shared equally than is presently the case.

To be sure, it’s a sherpa’s lift for MLB to get us to that point. Persuading large-market teams like the Yankees, Cubs, Dodgers, and Red Sox, who all make a lot of money off their local-broadcast contracts and have ownership stakes in (or full ownership of) their respective RSNs, to cede control and thus reduce their revenues won’t be easy, and it will probably require MLB to essentially buy them out of those arrangements. Maybe the expansion fees that will be realized by the end of the current decade can play a role there, but that’s not really our problem. Manfred wants it to happen, and as a valet to the interests of ownership he doesn’t act without a sturdy consensus behind him. As such, it’s likely to happen.

At this point, I’m of two minds about whether this expanded sharing of revenues would be a good thing. The fan in me – the Cardinals fan in me – does see it as a good thing. The Cardinals under the DeWitts have a history of mostly spending in line with their aspirations, and a general flattening of the revenue disparities in MLB would likely be to their benefit, provided they took advantage of it by investing in the roster. As well, that 2028 timeline aligns with what figures to be the Cards’ return to relevance in the standings — assuming the ongoing rebuild (let’s start calling it what it plainly is) yields the desired outcome. Even as Bill DeWitt III takes on more of a decision-making role and grips more and more of the reins, the expectation is that they’ll spend when this emerging young core is ready to contend.

As a general observer of MLB, however, I have reservations. Giving the likes of Bob Nutting and John Fisher and Bruce Sherman and the Dolans and maybe Patrick Zalupski if he doesn’t do better than Stuart Sternberg more money – or at least a larger share of league revenues – to hoard and sit on doesn’t appeal to me. We already have such a widespread problem among revenue-sharing-recipient team owners. Too many of them have too much guaranteed revenue going their way, which degrades incentives to improve their on-field product and attract paying customers. More of an “NFL model” broadcast scheme could lead to more of that odious behavior.

This, though, is a space devoted to the Cardinals from a fan standpoint, and through that lens I see these potential changes yielding a competitive benefit – assuming, to repeat, that ownership is willing to press that advantage when the time comes. There are unknowns, of course. Any changes to the revenue-sharing structure must be collectively bargained with the players union, and no doubt they’ll have the same concerns I noted in the preceding paragraph. As well, there’s the matter of whether those other local revenues – gameday monies and team sponsorships and so forth – continue to be shared at the present rates or whether the sharing is scaled back to make the whole thing more palatable to the flagship teams giving up control of their RSNs.

The larger takeaway is that far-reaching changes are afoot – changes that may accrue to the Cardinals’ benefit – and this most recent upheaval is a modest step in that general direction. We’ll know more when the next CBA emerges from whatever labor war is ahead next offseason.

Enough about all that, you’ll agree. As for trade matters, the Brendon Donovan market was recently helped by the Diamondbacks’ decision to take Ketel Marte off the block. Maybe that means Chaim Bloom’s biggest trade of his brief tenure to date is in the offing. Maybe, in turn, I’ll be back soon to talk about that.