Thirteen NBA teams currently have contracts with Main Street Sports. That number has been culled over the last few years, but will at least be stable for next season. Five teams — the Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, Minnesota Timberwolves and Milwaukee Bucks — chose this spring to stay on FanDuel Sports Network for the next two years instead of opting out of their contracts, according to sources briefed on the deals. One team executive said the difficulty of navigating the broadcast landscape outside of the RSN model has made it “worse than cable,” as they pointed out why those 13 teams have clung to their deals. While the new national media deals will pay NBA teams about $140 million each when it begins next season, and escalate up to about $290 million in the final year of the contracts, according to industry sources, local TV rights fees are still important sources of revenue for franchises, especially as teams that left cable see theirs drop and those still with Main Street Sports have had theirs clipped.
by Hoops Hype