Detroit Tigers Regional Television Network Gets Exciting Rebrand
Things on the field look bright for the Detroit Tigers after many of their young prospects appear to be future cornerstones of this franchise after debuting and getting extended playing time at the Major League level.
It's well documented how things turned around for the better during this campaign after the front office traded away multiple veteran assets at the trade deadline and embraced a youth movement.
While they might have thought they were still a couple years away from truly contending, this group got red-hot and was one win away in Game 5 of the ALDS from competing for a chance to play in the World Series.
But for however bright things look on the field for the Tigers, there were some questions regarding things off of it.
One of the major ones was what would happen with their regional network Bally Sports.
Diamond Sports Group, the owner of Bally Sports, filed for bankruptcy in March 2023 that created some issues regarding who would broadcast Detroit games going forward.
This impacted not just the Tigers, but also the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons.
Revenue was at the forefront of this concern, especially when it was revealed that Bally Sports was set to liquidate following the 2024 season and they were going to drop the rights to broadcast Tigers games going forward.
However, Detroit got some good news when it comes to the future of their regional sports network when it was announced that Bally Sports was rebranding to "FanDuel Sports Network."
As of today, Bally Sports is now FanDuel Sports Network...your new home for your home teams. For more information on what this means for Bally Sports customers, visit https://t.co/m220fgUdEh pic.twitter.com/71KzHRuG9R
— FanDuel Sports Network Help (@FanDuelSN_Help_) October 21, 2024
"Partnering with Diamond provides us an opportunity to put the FanDuel brand at the intersection of the nation’s largest group of regional sports networks. A large cohort of FanDuel customers are devoted RSN viewers and this agreement allows us to further cement the FanDuel brand with sports fans and provides a unique vehicle to reward our users," president of sports for FanDuel, Mike Raffensperger, said in a statement.
There are still some things the Tigers have to work out, though.
According to Andrew Birkle of The Detroit Free Press, there is a chance the franchise still looks for another regional broadcasting partner for the 2025 season and beyond.
"Since the news came out, there hasn't been any word about what the Tigers intend to do, and whether they'll appear on FanDuel Sports Network is not clear at this time," he reports.
This will be something to monitor, but at the very least, FanDuel is in a much better financial situation than Bally Sports and Diamond Sports Group, so if they do decide to continue this partnership and broadcast with FanDuel Sports Network, they likely won't run into these issues again.
