The end of Main Street Sports Group is becoming increasingly official.
Federal law requires companies to give employees 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs or a facility closure — it’s called a WARN Act notice, and it’s essentially a paper trail that makes it harder for companies to quietly disappear without warning their workers.
Main Street Sports Group, the parent company of FanDuel Sports Network, just filed one in Minnesota and another in Missouri, notifying both states that it’s closing its Minneapolis office and laying off approximately 20 employees. The layoffs are set to begin April 14 — right around when the NBA and NHL regular seasons wrap up, and the last functional reason for FanDuel Sports Network to keep its lights on will be gone.
In a statement provided in connection with the St. Louis filing, Main Street Sports’ head said: “FanDuel Sports Network is continuing to broadcast NBA and NHL games as we engage in discussions with our partners about our go-forward plans. While final decisions have not been made, we have issued WARN notices to employees, as required by law, regarding potential workforce impacts in the coming months. Any and all aspects of the WARN notices can be revoked at any time. We remain committed to transparency and fair treatment of our employees.”
The affected positions in the Minneapolis closure include account executives, broadcast engineers, editors, producers, managers of media services and operations, programming coordinators, sales associates, senior writers, and traffic directors, essentially the full operational infrastructure of a regional broadcast facility.
The WARN filings are the latest and most concrete sign yet that Main Street Sports Group is winding down. As we’ve covered extensively, the company — successor to Diamond Sports Group, which spent 20 months in Chapter 11 bankruptcy before emerging in November 2024 — has been effectively on death watch since a proposed sale to DAZN collapsed in January. All nine MLB teams under contract with Main Street subsequently terminated their deals, with eight of them — the Brewers, Marlins, Rays, Royals, Cardinals, Reds, Tigers, and Angels — moving their local rights to MLB for the 2026 season, while the Braves are pursuing their own network. Main Street had also been missing payments to teams for months before the DAZN deal fell apart.
What happens to the NBA and NHL teams that are still on the FanDuel Sports Network is the more pressing short-term question. The 13 NBA clubs and seven NHL franchises currently airing on FanDuel Sports Network are at risk of losing their broadcast home mid-season if Main Street moves faster than April. The NBA has been preparing contingency plans, with most of the league’s FanDuel teams expected to eventually join a centralized local streaming package the league is developing. The NHL’s situation is less settled.
For now, the WARN notices set the clearest timeline for when Main Street Sports Group — in all meaningful senses — will be effectively done.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.