Fubo has withdrawn its multimillion-dollar offers to the 13 NBA teams searching for new local broadcast homes, SBJ learned Wednesday, leaving those franchises with one less option as they pursue single-year, stop-gap broadcast deals for the 2026-27 season.
Disney-owned Fubo on Wednesday contacted the former Main Street Sports Group teams — Hawks, Hornets, Cavaliers, Pistons, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Heat, Bucks, T-Wolves, Thunder, Magic, and Spurs — to say upper management would stop bidding for local NBA broadcasts due to what sources labeled as uncertainty surrounding proposed minimum guarantees.
“The opportunity was evaluated but ultimately Fubo could not find a path forward that made financial and operational sense,” Fubo told SBJ in a statement.
According to multiple industry sources, Fubo’s offers to teams for the 2026-27 season had ranged from $8M to as much as $20M, which exceeded bids from competitors DAZN (which offered between $8M and $15M) and Victory+ (which is still pursuing financing). But with Fubo now out of the picture, those industry sources believe most teams are leaning toward airing games next season on over-the-air stations — as the Pistons and Scripps announced earlier Wednesday — or through DAZN’s streaming service.
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A crucial issue is the length of the contracts. With the NBA expected to launch a consolidated home for local broadcasts in time for the 2027-28 season, teams are looking to do either one-year local broadcast deals or packages with one-year out clauses. The Pistons-Scripps deal, for instance, is believed to run only through next season. But according to sources, Fubo executives could not agree to early termination options for those other clubs.
Fubo had been eying local sports broadcasts for over six months and, at one point, contemplated an investment in Main Street Sports Group that might have kept MSSG solvent. It made sense because Fubo was the rare vMVPD that housed Main Street’s Fan Duel Sports Network game broadcasts.
But Fubo and Main Street never struck a deal, and Fubo didn’t re-emerge until MSSG began its winddown — which is when it began reaching out to teams.
“As we said on our most recent quarterly earnings call, Fubo enjoys its position as a leader in local sports,” Fubo said in its statement to SBJ. “Local sports rights are an ever-evolving landscape, and it is our job to consider all opportunities.”
The development leaves the 13 Main Street teams with less lucrative possibilities going forward. For that reason, sources believe the OTA option along with a coinciding DTC app — a model currently implemented by the Suns, Jazz, Mavericks, Trail Blazers and Pelicans — is the most popular one-year plan to tide the teams over until the league platform launches.
But DAZN is offering one-year escape clauses, as well, and it has the billion-dollar backing of CEO Shay Segev — who has made it clear DAZN would also like to bid to become the NBA’s streaming hub for that 2027-28 season or whenever that time comes.
Amazon Prime Video and YouTube are also interested in the national streaming RSN. So was Fubo, until its management pulled the plug Wednesday.
Fubo’s model had been attractive to several teams. Besides the minimum guarantee, its plan was to do direct-to-distributer deals with cable and satellite entities for linear reach and possibly broadcast 10 to 15 games OTA. The idea was also to create a quorum of the ex-Main Street teams — possibly as many as 10 –to make the investment worthwhile and sustainable.
Without a quorum, Fubo led several teams to believe they would drop the project — although in recent weeks, there was a sense from teams Fubo had changed course and a quorum wasn’t a prerequisite to keep bids alive.
In the end, though, sources said Fubo believed that — with the NBA’s eventual national streaming hub looming in 2027-28 — a potential one-year-only investment with prohibitive minimal guarantees wasn’t fiscally prudent.
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