Sports Teams Are Becoming Media Companies
When the Atlanta Braves launched BravesVision ahead of the 2026 season, they didn’t just take control of distribution. They took on the responsibilities of a full media company: production, sales, inventory, billing, and everything in between. They went direct-to-customer.
That shift is happening across professional sports, and it’s accelerating.
The RSN Collapse Created an Opening
A little background. Regional sports networks were the distribution backbone for local team broadcasts for decades. Cord cutting had been eroding their economics for years. As cable subscribers declined, the carriage fees that funded rights payments to teams declined with them. Then Diamond Sports Group collapsed and took the model with it. Diamond Sports Group, which operated the Bally Sports networks and held television rights to 14 MLB teams, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023. By February 2026, its successor company, Main Street Sports Group, stopped making rights payments to MLB teams entirely, and nine clubs terminated their agreements almost simultaneously.
MLB saw an opportunity: eliminate the middle man and go direct-to-customer (DTC). The league established MLB Local Media in 2023, initially to take over production for the San Diego Padres after Bally Sports San Diego missed a rights payment. By the start of the 2026 season, MLB Local Media was producing and distributing broadcasts for 14 clubs. MLB recognized early that the RSN model was fracturing and made a conscious decision to get ahead of it, to take control of its own broadcasts, distribution, and connection to fans.
A league or team that goes DTC becomes responsible for the entire media business: production, ad sales, inventory management, sponsor relationships, order fulfillment, billing, and reconciliation. For most franchises, it's entirely new territory and requires them to think like media companies.
Other leagues have moved in the same DTC direction. The NBA is working to build a centralized in-market streaming platform, after the collapse of Main Street Sports Group freed up local rights for most of its teams. The Dallas Stars partnered with Victory+, an ad-supported streaming platform that launched in September 2024, and have since expanded it to include the Anaheim Ducks, the Texas Rangers, the NWSL, and the Western Hockey League. The Portland Trail Blazers cut short their ROOT Sports contract and launched BlazerVision for 2024-25 season. Local broadcast ratings jumped 69% year-over-year, the largest increase in the NBA that season.
When the legacy distribution arrangement collapses or becomes untenable, sports organizations are moving toward ownership rather than finding another RSN.
What Does a Sports DTC Operation Require?
Distribution gets the most attention in sports DTC, but it is only one piece of what these organizations are building. A league or team that goes DTC becomes responsible for the entire media business: production, ad sales, inventory management, sponsor relationships, order fulfillment, billing, and reconciliation. For most franchises, it’s entirely new territory and requires them to think like media companies. For example:
Who Produces Your Broadcast? The first question for any organization entering this space is whether to produce content in-house, partner with the league, or work with an outside production company. MLB Local Media offers a scalable model for clubs that want league infrastructure behind them. The Braves chose to own the full production apparatus themselves. Victory+ and other operators were built with an eye toward operating across multiple team properties simultaneously. Each approach carries different tradeoffs on cost, control, and long-term flexibility.
Your Business Model Matters. MLB offers in-market streaming subscriptions for its locally produced clubs at $99.99 per season or $19.99 per month. BlazerVision follows a similar model. Victory+ takes a different approach, leaving monetization decisions to each team.
The reality is that not all fans are willing to pay to watch their local team, especially after decades of access through bundled cable. That creates a fundamental tradeoff. Subscription models generate direct revenue but can limit reach. Ad-supported models expand the audience but rely entirely on monetization through sponsors.
That monetization decision flows through everything. It determines audience scale, the depth of engagement data, and ultimately how advertising inventory is packaged, priced, and sold.
What took media companies years to build, sports organizations are now trying to stand up in a single offseason.
Ad Sales Is Where the Money Either Shows Up or Doesn’t. Ad sales and operations are where sports DTC efforts can break down. The inventory is complex, the sponsor relationships are new, and the workflows are unfamiliar.
Teams look to legacy media companies for inspiration, where NBCU/Peacock sets the bar. They sell out inventory early, package deals across broadcast and streaming, and let brands reach multiple audiences within a single cultural moment. That’s not necessarily an achievable goal for most teams, but it’s a clear view of what mature ad operations look like.
Sports DTC operators are trying to build toward that standard at a local level, without the infrastructure NBCUniversal has spent decades developing.
For teams like the Braves or platforms like Victory+, the environment is fragmented. Pre-game, in-game, halftime, highlights, alternate feeds, and FAST channels all carry different rates, commitments, and fulfillment requirements. Sponsors expect custom, multi-platform packages. Every dollar requires coordination across proposal, inventory, trafficking, and reconciliation.
Most teams are still managing this with spreadsheets. What took media companies years to build, sports organizations are now trying to stand up in a single offseason.
The First-Party Data Advantage
The biggest difference between DTC and the RSN model is data. For the first time, teams have a direct relationship with their audience, including who they are, how they watch, and how they engage.
That changes the economics. Advertisers can buy against known audiences instead of broad proxies, shifting the conversation from CPMs to precision and performance.
But data only matters if it’s usable. If it can’t be activated inside the sales workflow, it doesn’t close deals. The teams that win will connect audience data directly to how inventory is sold, packaged, and delivered.
Building for a Long-Term Business
The decisions made early, on broadcast partnerships, on subscription versus ad-supported distribution, on how advertising is sold and fulfilled, will determine whether DTC operations become durable revenue assets or expensive experiments.
We’re here to help. Operative works with media organizations navigating this kind of complexity. Our AOS platform and Managed Services offerings are built to handle the full arc of ad sales operations (from proposal and inventory management through order fulfillment, trafficking, and reconciliation) across linear and streaming environments. For a sports organization standing up a DTC media business, that means having the infrastructure in place to sell confidently, fulfill accurately, and prove delivery to sponsors from Day One. Distribution is just the entry point. Execution is where the revenue is.