According to sports business reporter John Ourand, the St. Louis Cardinals have informed Major League Baseball that they plan on utilizing MLB as their broadcast partner moving forward. 

He put the news out on social media as the Cardinals have officially ended their relationship with Main Street Sports.

Sources: Six of the nine MLB teams with Main Street Sports are moving their media rights to the league. The Brewers, Marlins, Rays, Royals, Cardinals and Reds told MLB of their plans over the weekend.

The other three--Braves, Tigers, Angels--have not been decided.

Here's what you need to know with spring training right around the corner.

From ESPN on Jan. 8.

Main Street, which holds 29 NBA, NHL and MLB teams in its portfolio and broadcasts their games under the name FanDuel Sports, emerged from a lengthy bankruptcy proceeding at the start of 2025 but finds itself in deep financial trouble again. Recent reports from Sports Business Journal stated that the company will dissolve at the end of the current NBA and NHL seasons if it does not execute a sale to another platform.

That uncertainty caused the nine MLB teams to re-evaluate their future situations. The Cardinals have chosen to go under MLB's control.

We are still waiting to learn details on that, but for comparison, the Seattle Mariners just went under MLB's broadcast umbrella. Just last week, they announced their plans, which include their games staying on traditional television, an in-market streaming platform, and out-of-market viewing options.

You can read more on their situation here to get a better idea of what could be coming to the Cardinals.

Moving away from the Regional Sports Network model tends to cost teams money in the short-term, however, it's unclear how it will impact things long-term. The Dodgers, for instance, are rolling in money because of their television deal, giving them an advantage over these teams under MLB's broadcast power. Rob Manfred's goal is to get each team under the MLB umbrella, helping to level the playing field, presumably. It will also give the league full force when seeking advertising partners and revenue opportunities.

Speaking of the Mariners up above, sports business insider Maury Brown of Forbes was recently on our sister 'Refuse to Lose' podcast and talked about how the television situation impacts teams further:

The one thing I will say is that the television landscape has created uncertainty, where money was locked in, right? It was cash certainty. You knew what your payments were gonna be coming in and whether you bode well in the standings or not, that money is still locked in.

Now, the Mariners will be leaning into how well they do from an advertiser's perspective and a streaming perspective, based upon performance in the standings. So that money is expected by most clubs to go down, and there's no backstop by the league that they did in the first year when clubs went over under Major League Baseball's production control, they did what they call backstopping. They said, "All right, whatever revenues you were supposed to make, we'll make up the difference." Well, they're not doing that anymore. So it's quite possible that ownership went, "You know what? There's just so much uncertainty right now, we're not gonna take a gamble," especially given the fact that after this year, like we're talking about, we're almost certainly gonna go into a lockout.

We will continue to keep you updated as the Cardinals announce their viewing plans.

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