The Cincinnati Reds reportedly turned down $42,000,000 from Main Street Sports Group, the owners of FanDuel Sports Network, for the broadcast rights for the 2026 season. The Athletic reports that was a renegotiated offer from the $52,000,000 the two had agreed to under the previous deal.
Main Street Sports Group is attempting to survive long enough to find a buyer for the company and things are not looking great on that front. The Reds, along with multiple other teams are now reportedly opting out of discussions with them and are going to turn over their broadcasting rights to MLB.
At this time it’s not been officially announced for all teams but the Reds announced it this evening, Major League Baseball will now be the broadcaster of 12 teams for the 2026 season. The Reds, along with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Washington Nationals, St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, Kansas City Royals, and Miami Marlins will all be under the umbrella of the league.
Time simply ran out for most everyone involved. Spring training begins in a week. Teams need to have time to start to sell subscriptions for the service through MLB. They need to know who to tell their advertising partners will be appearing on the “airwaves” for. Teams also likely felt that there was a lot of risk involved in accepting lower numbers from this group who has missed payments recently and the company is hanging on by a thread as it is. Having more certainty going with MLB produced games and knowing that their broadcast partner isn’t going to fold in the middle of the season or fail to make a big payment to them during the season changes a lot of the ways they can go about their business operations.
As for the Cincinnati Reds specifically, we learned the price and the layout. From the Reds press release:
Under this new agreement, fans in the team’s home television territory will be able to watch all locally distributed games via cable and satellite providers or stream digitally on Reds.tv without blackouts (editors note that nationally exclusive games are not included).
Reds.tv subscriptions will be available soon. Prices are expected to be $99.99 for the season or $19.99 per month.
In other markets that have had this kind of deal in the past a third option was also available to fans where they could purchase MLB.tv along with their team-specific club for a sightly higher price than the normal MLB.tv package so that they could not be blacked out from MLB.tv. The San Diego Padres, for example, charged $199.99 for that entire deal last year along with options for $19.99 a month of $99.99 for the Padres only deal. At this point the Reds have not mentioned that as being an option. The press release notes that subscriptions will be available soon. You can sign up here through the Reds website to be alerted via email when more information is available.
To clarify the “no blackouts” policy – games that are not being broadcast by another rights-holder, such as ESPN or NBC or TBS or Fox or FS1, etc. will be available without blackouts in the greater Cincinnati television market to those who purchase the Reds.tv streaming package. That package will not grant you the ability to watch games through the service that will be on those other rights-holder channels and will require you to have access to those channels elsewhere.
One additional note as someone asked: If you don’t live in the greater Cincinnati tv market then your normal MLB.tv subscription will get you the Reds games as it always has. You may be subject to blackouts for road games by the Reds when they are playing a team that is in your local television market.
This article has been updated with new information about the prices for the Reds.tv package.
