DAZN’s Local Shopping Spree Is a Bid for National Rights

sports onto CBS With CBS Sports and TNT Sports now under one roof after the Skydance merger, Awful Announcing reports the company is expected to look for ways to shift TNT's sports inventory onto the CBS broadcast network. Nothing is imminent; leagues and networks are still working through existing distribution contracts. CBS's David Berson now runs the combined group after TNT Sports chief Luis Silberwasser left.

Broadcast reaches more homes, but TNT's deals were signed for cable, and the leagues have a say.

list Inside World Football reports that Mumbai City FC extended its deal with the Indian Super Gaming League, a franchise-based national esports championship, which becomes the club's principal partner for 2026-27. The two plan content and fan events linking football and gaming, and the club renewed kit sponsor Matix. The ISL now runs on a club-led commercial model, with Sony Sports Network broadcasting from Oct. 10.

The top sponsor isn't a bank or a phone company; it's another league.

with no football in it Front Office Sports reports that the Chiefs' Foolish Club Studios, recently signed by UTA, is taking a financial stake in a film unrelated to the team. The Cubs' "Nine Innings to Love," a 17-part TikTok romance microdrama set in the Wrigley Field bleachers, passed 1 million views, and the NFL's Skydance partnership has produced roughly 20 projects. "Everyone is looking for an audience," said Chiefs CMO Lara Krug.

Teams are now making the entertainment themselves.

operators raised concerns about the CFTC's proposal on affiliated trading entities. Polymarket, which says it has no active affiliated trading arm, supports the rule as written. Kalshi, which had offered to cap its own desk at 5% of exchange volume, says its affiliate accounted for about 1.5% this year.

The industry is splitting along business lines: the company without a trading arm likes a rule limiting them.

Investment as LIV plans its exit from bankruptcy; team stake sales and player equity to follow Investors → Agentiq Sports $4M Funding round for San Francisco fintech that lets fans invest indirectly in athletes' careers

One of last year's Grand Clio Sports winners, alongside Omnicom Health's PR work for Brazilian club Gavião Kyikatejê FC. The 2026 Clio Sports jury has now been named; Gold, Silver, Bronze and shortlist results arrive in mid-November, and this year's Grand winners will be revealed at the Clio Sports show in New York on Dec. 8.

Washington State defends AI-generated sports content Awful Announcing reports that Washington State's athletics department responded to criticism of its move to AI-generated sports media content, acknowledging concerns tied to the history of the university's Murrow College, which has educated some of the country's best-known journalists. That is what gives the story its sting. It's one thing for a school to automate its content; it's another for a school known for training journalists to do it.

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A collapsed acquisition, a string of one-team deals and a quiet purchase of the plumbing: the making of DAZN's U.S. local business, and what it is really building. o understand how DAZN got to 35 teams, start with what fell apart. Earlier in 2026, DAZN was in talks to buy Main Street Sports Group, the owner of the FanDuel Sports Network channels, which held local rights for a long list of MLB, NBA and NHL teams. That deal never happened.

Main Street wound down and became insolvent after last season, and the fallout is still visible: as reported in these pages on Oct. 7, the NHL is now producing local broadcasts for six of its clubs because those channels went away. Dozens of teams needed a new local home, and DAZN went shopping. The first big move came in late July, when DAZN signed carriage deals with MSG Networks and YES Network.

That made it the exclusive streaming home of seven New York-area teams: the Yankees, the Knicks, the Nets, the Rangers, the Islanders, the Devils and the Buffalo Sabres. Viewers who already get MSG or YES through cable keep access at no extra cost, and users of the Gotham Sports app are moving to DAZN partway through the season. Then came the NBA, one team at a time.

By the end of September, DAZN had signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves and Orlando Magic. It also struck a distribution deal with Monumental Sports Network, which carries local Washington Wizards games. The Spurs deal shows how these arrangements work.

DAZN carries every Spurs game that isn't on national TV across southern, western and central Texas, while the team still produces the games itself, and 22 games also air free over the air. In hockey, DAZN became the streaming home of the Los Angeles Kings, at $19.99 a month or $129.99 for a season. At the same time, DAZN bought the plumbing.

In late August it announced the purchase of ViewLift, a streaming company that works with

sports organizations, and Everpass Media, which holds the exclusive rights to bring NFL Sunday Ticket into bars, restaurants and hotels. Everpass becomes DAZN for Business. And look at who becomes a DAZN shareholder when that deal closes: RedBird Capital, TKO and the NFL itself.

It is the same RedBird that, as reported here on Oct. 7, just put another $4 billion into Skydance. So what is DAZN actually building? Think of it as an audition.

Local rights are cheaper than national rights, and a lot of them became available all at once. Each team deal gives DAZN subscribers, data on what fans will pay and a working relationship with the league office. When the NHL and Major League Baseball sit down to sell their national packages, DAZN can arrive as a company that already streams their games in some of the biggest markets in the country.

That is what Segev means when he says he hopes it will "roll up" into a bigger deal. But there are real questions. Thirty-five teams spread across three leagues is a patchwork, not a national service; a fan in Cleveland and a fan in Los Angeles are paying for very different things.

Local streaming has also been a hard business. The company DAZN almost bought didn't survive it. And the leagues DAZN is courting have other suitors, from the traditional networks to the big streamers.

DAZN's advantage is speed. It moved while everyone else was waiting to see what would happen to the regional networks. Whether being first is enough to win a national deal is the question the next round of league negotiations will answer.

The winners in sports media move into the gaps a disruption leaves. DAZN filled the hole the regional networks left, one team at a time, and now wants national rights; Skydance, the Chiefs and the prediction markets are chasing openings of their own.

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