If you are a baseball, basketball, or hockey fan who has been searching the channel guide and coming up empty — or paying for an app that just stopped working — this article is for you. The regional sports network model that carried your team for the last twenty years is over. Not slowing down. Over.
I have been wiring living rooms in the DC metro for 28 years. In that time I have watched the cable bundle build itself around regional sports, and now I am watching it come apart. So let me give you the plain version of what happened and where the games actually live in 2026.
The short version
The biggest regional sports network company in the country, Diamond Sports Group, ran the 19 FanDuel Sports Network channels — the ones formerly branded as Bally Sports, and before that Fox Sports. Diamond came out of bankruptcy in January 2025 as a new company called Main Street Sports Group. That new company collapsed too. The last live broadcast on a FanDuel Sports Network was an NHL playoff game on April 30, 2026.
So if your team was one of the 29 NBA, NHL, or MLB teams that carried a FanDuel channel, that channel is gone now. Not on cable, not on satellite, not on the FanDuel app. Gone.
What that means for you depends on which team you root for.
If your team is one of these, the channel is gone
Teams that lost their regional channel when FanDuel Sports Network shut down:
- MLB (9 teams): Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Rangers, Reds, Royals, Tigers, Twins, plus the Guardians and Diamondbacks who already left the system earlier. The Padres and Rockies also walked away in 2024-2025.
- NBA (13 teams): Cavaliers, Heat, Hornets, Magic, Mavericks, Pacers, Pistons, Rockets, Spurs, Suns, Thunder, Timberwolves, and Hawks.
- NHL (7 teams): Blue Jackets, Blues, Hurricanes, Lightning, Predators, Red Wings, and Wild.
For most of these teams, the league or the team itself is putting some games on free over-the-air TV in the local market, plus selling a separate streaming app. The Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz moved to free over-the-air TV in 2023 and never looked back. The Padres, Diamondbacks, Brewers, and Twins all did versions of the same thing in 2024-2025. Expect more of the same.
If your team is one of these and you have not put up an antenna yet, this is the year. A $30 antenna and a $20 streaming app is the new RSN bundle.
If you live in the DC area, MASN changed
This one is specific to my market so I want to be clear.
The Nationals are no longer on MASN. They left after the 2025 season. The 2026 Nationals games stream on a new MLB-produced service called Nationals.tv, around $20 a month. Selected games also air on free local over-the-air TV in the DMV. MASN2 shut down on March 3, 2026.
If you are a Nats fan in the DC area, you can finally use YouTube TV. There is no RSN involved in your team anymore. Your $20 Nationals.tv subscription plus YouTube TV covers it.
The Orioles are still on MASN. MASN is now Orioles-only. YouTube TV still does not carry MASN. If you are an Orioles fan in the DMV, you still need DirecTV Stream, Fubo, the MASN+ app directly, or cable.
The regional sports networks that survived
A few RSNs are still operating because they sit inside ownership groups deep enough to keep them running. As of June 2026:
- YES Network — Yankees, Brooklyn Nets. Owned partly by the Yankees, Amazon, and RedBird Capital. Carried by most live TV streaming services.
- MSG Networks — Knicks, Rangers, Islanders, Devils, Sabres. Owned by the Dolan family.
- NESN — Red Sox, Bruins. Owned by Fenway Sports Group.
- Marquee Sports Network — Cubs. Added to Hulu + Live TV in March 2026, which was the first major positive carriage news in years.
- Spectrum SportsNet LA — Dodgers. Cable-only in most of LA, still hard to get without Spectrum service or DirecTV Stream.
- MASN — Orioles only, post-Nats.
- Monumental Sports Network — Wizards, Capitals, Mystics. Owned by Ted Leonsis. The streaming-first model the survivors are copying.
- NBC Sports regional networks — Celtics (NBC Sports Boston), 76ers and Flyers (NBC Sports Philadelphia), Warriors and Giants (NBC Sports Bay Area), Kings and A's (NBC Sports California). Comcast-owned, carried by YouTube TV and most others.
One more development worth knowing about: YES Network and MSG Networks announced in early 2026 that they are forming a joint streaming venture called Gotham Advanced Media. The pitch is a single direct-to-consumer app that carries Yankees, Mets-on-SNY-content, Knicks, Rangers, Devils, Nets, Islanders, Sabres. If you are a New York-area sports fan with multiple teams, this is the one to watch. As of June 2026 it has not launched commercially.
What you should actually do
Three honest options depending on how much you watch.
Option 1: You watch one team and you live in their market. Put up an antenna. Subscribe to the team's streaming app if they have one (most do now). Drop your live TV service if all you used it for was the games. You will save money and lose nothing important. The antenna pays for itself in the first month.
Option 2: You watch one team and you do not live in their market. The league out-of-market app is your answer. MLB.tv is $149 a year for every out-of-market game. NBA League Pass is $99 a year. NHL is now on ESPN+ for $11.99 a month. The Premier League is on Peacock. None of these need a live TV subscription.
Option 3: You watch multiple teams and you want the full live TV experience. Look hard at Fubo and DirecTV Stream. Fubo carries the most surviving RSNs — YES, NESN, Marquee, MSG, the NBC Sports regionals. DirecTV Stream is the only major service that carries SportsNet LA for Dodgers fans. YouTube TV is great for national sports but it carries very few RSNs, so check whether yours is on the list before signing up.
Why this happened, in one paragraph
Cable subscriptions have dropped from about 100 million households in 2010 to around 50 million in 2026. Regional sports networks lived on the carriage fee — the dollar per month, give or take, that every cable household paid for the local sports channel whether you watched it or not. When the bundle shrinks, that math stops working. Diamond was paying teams more in rights fees than the carriage fees were bringing in. So it collapsed, and the lenders, Hudson Bay Capital and PGIM, ran a controlled wind-down. The teams that built their business around the RSN are now scrambling to figure out direct-to-consumer streaming, and most of them are about three years behind. Expect more antenna recommendations, more $20-a-month team apps, and more free over-the-air games for the next several seasons until the new normal settles.
Bottom line
If you have been frustrated trying to find your team this season, you are not crazy. The system changed underneath you. The good news is that for most teams, the answer in 2026 is cheaper than what you were paying before — a $30 antenna and a $20 team app beats a $90 cable package. For a few teams, especially in big markets with surviving RSNs, you still need a real live TV service, and Fubo or DirecTV Stream are the right calls.
If you want help mapping your specific team to your specific zip code, run our Tailor Fit tool. It asks four questions, looks up what is actually available where you live, and gives you the honest read.
Run Tailor Fit — Get a Personalized Recommendation
Last verified: 2026-06-04 against live carrier and rights data. Streaming rights shift quarterly — we re-check every season.
Sources for the facts in this article: ESPN reporting on Main Street Sports Group wind-down (April 2026); Sportico on the RSN-model collapse (April 2026); MLB and Nationals announcements re: Nationals.tv (January 2026); MASN public filings re: MASN2 shutdown (March 2026); Hulu+Live / Fubo merger close (October 29, 2025); NFL-ESPN equity deal (April 2026); Marquee Sports Network carriage on Hulu+Live (March 2026).