MN Wild Worried About FanDuel Sports Network

Watching Minnesota Wild and Minnesota Timberwolves games has gotten increasingly difficult, in recent years. and that’s because their games are still carried by FanDuel Sports Network, whose parent company Main Street Sports continues to spiral financially.

The Minnesota Twins have already jumped ship. 2026 will be the second season of Twins.TV coverage. Meanwhile, the Wild and Wolves are supposed to remain on FanDuel Sports Network North through the end of the regular season, before both organizations rethink their broadcast plans for 2026-27 and beyond.

Broadcast changes for the Minnesota Wild

Last week the Minnesota Wild announced that four upcoming games will be broadcast over the air on KSTP (ABC – Ch. 5) and 45TV. The timing is not by coincidence. According to Michael Russo and Joe Smith (The Athletic), the Wild are worried about FanDuel Sports Network making it through the rest of the season.

The Wild have been working the past two years to find alternatives in case FanDuel goes under. They don’t know if FanDuel will get through this season, let alone be around next season. So the alternatives they’ve investigated are streaming games themselves or putting games over the air. This is clearly a guinea pig to see how it’ll work if it ever gets to this point permanently.

On Xfinity, games on FanDuel have been elevated to upper-tier packages, so the Wild’s reach to their fan base is more limited than ever. So the Wild are testing the waters to try to get their product to a much larger audience because over-the-air games are available to theoretically everybody, and their current agreement with FanDuel allows for the Wild to do this.

The Athletic

Multiple affiliates throughout the Minnesota Wild’s broadcast territory will carry those games as well. Considering the unpredictability of a company constantly teetering on bankruptcy and failure, it makes sense that the franchise would want to have alternatives.

To date the Wild have played just 53 games. Getting through the final 29 regular season contests while being able to disseminate the product to fans is a must. While gate and in-stadium transactions provide a good amount of revenue, it’s the broadcast rights that often drive the greatest check.

Minnesota building in contingency plans makes even more sense given the uncertainty for next season. FanDuel Sports Network has already lost the backing of Major League Baseball and that won’t help already struggling revenues.

A Stanley Cup run would only further invite interest in the team. Over-the-air games are available to anyone with a set of bunny ears, and making sure to stoke the fire while figuring out the path forward makes good business sense.

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