The status quo will remain in place for the Timberwolves and their TV partner next season.
That’s not a bad thing in this case.
Sports Business Journal reports that the Wolves, Bucks, Cavaliers, Heat and Hawks are all sticking with the regional carrier FanDuel Sports (previously Bally Sports) to carry their games for the 2025-26 season.
All of them are taking the certainty of eight-figure rights fees over the potential for greater reach offered by a combination of streaming and over-the-air options.
Those rights fees are shrinking but still meaningful, as SBJ reported. The Wolves earned $25.9 million for the 2023-24 season, a figure that dipped to $24.1 million this season.
It’s unclear what they will get next year, but it figures to be less than this year though not enough to persuade them to look elsewhere. Each NBA team will also get $142 million in national TV rights next season, a far larger piece of the financial puzzle than local revenue.
Faced with a similar predicament, the Twins this season opted to leave FanDuel Sport North and have their games produced and distributed by Major League Baseball. That move gave them the ability to finally offer their games with a standalone streaming option that didn’t require a cable or satellite subscription, something they could not previously do because FanDuel did not have streaming rights to Twins games.
But as I talked about on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast, the Wolves (and Wild, for that matter) don’t have that problem with FanDuel Sports North. FanDuel has the streaming rights to their games, and they are part of a package offered to standalone subscribers for $19.99 a month.
