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RSN + Sports Rights Coverage Atlas 2026
CC-BY 4.0 · Free to use with attribution
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What's in this dataset
Comprehensive US sports media rights and RSN carriage dataset for the 2026 season. Each row is a single rights property (e.g., "NFL Sunday Night Football on NBC", "MLB MASN package", "NBA on TNT") with structured fields: which carrier holds the rights, deal type, annual value, start + end year, exclusivity, OTA-free availability, paid-streaming availability, and notes. Covers NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, NCAA football/basketball, F1, UFC, golf, tennis.
Schema
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
league | Pro/college league |
property | Specific rights package (e.g., "Sunday Night Football", "National package") |
carrier | Service holding the rights (broadcaster, streamer, RSN) |
deal_type | Structure (e.g., "11-year deal", "annual", "exclusive streaming") |
annual_value_usd | Annual deal value in USD (where disclosed) |
start_year | First season of the current deal |
end_year | Last season of the current deal |
exclusive | Is this carrier the sole rights-holder for the property? |
carries_ota_free | Is content also available over-the-air free (YES/NO) |
carries_paid_streaming | Is content available via paid streaming (YES/NO) |
notes | Free-text caveats: bundling, add-on requirements, etc. |
last_verified | Date this row was last cross-checked (ISO 8601) |
source_url | Primary public source URL for the deal |
Methodology
How we built and verified this dataset:
- Source-of-truth: official press releases from each league + carrier announcing the rights deal.
- Cross-validated against the FCC carriage filings (where applicable), SBJ + SportsBusinessDaily reporting, and Variety/Bloomberg media-deal coverage.
- For RSN-specific rows, validated against current channel-finder tools at YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo, DirecTV Stream, Sling, and Spectrum. Note: RSN carriage shifts mid-season — we re-verify each Q1, Q3.
- Deal value fields are blank where not publicly disclosed. We do not impute or estimate undisclosed values.
- OTA + streaming flags use a conservative test: YES requires the content to be reliably available via that channel for the entire current season, not just selected games.
- Re-verified quarterly + after any major mid-season announcement (e.g., RSN bankruptcy, carrier dropping a network).
Example analyses you can run
- Which leagues have the highest fragmentation across services in 2026?
- What's the total annual value of all NFL rights deals combined?
- Which leagues have deals expiring within the next 24 months?
- How does OTA-free coverage compare across NFL, MLB, NBA?
- Which RSN-only leagues are most affected by the Diamond Sports/Bally bankruptcy?
Sources
- NFL.com press releases on media distribution agreements through 2033
- MLB.com, NBA.com, NHL.com, MLS.com press releases
- NCAA conference media deal announcements (SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Pac-12, Big East)
- SportsBusinessDaily + SportsBusinessJournal media-deal reporting
- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Bloomberg media-deal coverage
- FCC carriage filings (where applicable to specific carrier disputes)
- Direct channel-finder tools at YouTube TV, Hulu + Live, Fubo, DirecTV Stream, Sling
Citation
If you cite this dataset in research, journalism, or government broadband mapping:
BibTeX:
License
This dataset is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). You're free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially
Under one condition:
- Attribution — give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
Full license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/