I’m not angry about the $119.99. That’s the part that should worry you.
If DAZN were simply gouging Wolves fans, this would be an easier column to write, because gouging is a villain you can point at. What DAZN is charging for the 2026-27 season — $19.99 a month or $119.99 for the year, with an “ultimate” tier at $24.99 and $139.99 — is almost exactly what the FanDuel app charged last season, $19.99 a month. The number barely moved. I read fine print because my grandfather read every contract the mine ever put in front of him, and I’m telling you the trap here isn’t the price. It’s the pile.
Here’s the actual fine print. DAZN can carry 55 of the Wolves’ 82 games. Fifteen of those 55 are free on the app and over the air, which is nice, except it means you’re paying $120 for the 40 games you can’t get any other way. The other 27 are national-exclusive (ABC, ESPN, NBC, Peacock, Prime Video), and DAZN doesn’t carry them at all. So the family in Virginia, Minnesota, 200 miles up the road from Target Center, pays DAZN its $120 and still cannot watch the Christmas game against OKC or a Tuesday night on Peacock without opening a different app and a different wallet.
Do that math all the way down, because the league won’t do it for you. To see those 27 national games you need Peacock Premium at $12.99 a month, Prime through a $14.99 Amazon membership, and a cable login or ESPN’s app for the ABC and ESPN dates. Add DAZN’s $120 to a few months of Peacock and Prime and a cable cord just for ESPN, and a local fan who wants every Timberwolves game is easily north of $300 depending on how many months you keep each app, for a team that used to come in over the antenna for the price of the damn electricity. For the record, DAZN’s $119.99 is already more than the Twins or the Wild charge for a full season, $99.99 each.
Now do it for the fan who moved away, because out of market it’s worse. NBA League Pass Team Pass is $119.99 for the year, the same as DAZN, but League Pass blacks out those same national games, the marquee slate DAZN skips too. So the Premium tier at $199.99 still leaves you buying Peacock and Prime on the side. There is no tier, at any price, from anybody, that hands you all 82. Hell, there isn’t even one that gets you close. That’s not a product. That’s a scavenger hunt, and you’re the one holding the list.
None of this happened by accident, and none of it is the fans’ fault. FanDuel Sports Network North collapsed when Main Street Sports, the company that crawled out of the Diamond bankruptcy, shut down in April and left the Wolves, Wild and Lynx scrambling for a way to reach their own viewers. The bankruptcy was a business the fans never signed, litigated in a court they were never invited to, and the bill for cleaning it up landed on their kitchen tables anyway. The Wolves’ DAZN deal runs five years with a mutual opt-out after this one, which tells you exactly how confident anybody is that this is the answer.
I don’t even think DAZN is the bad guy here. Wolves and Lynx CEO Matthew Caldwell said the quiet part plainly: “Every team has to make their own decisions,” and predicted “the majority of the 13 NBA teams that had been on FanDuel will be going direct to consumer with their own paywall option.” Translation: every market is about to become its own toll road, and there is no map. Caldwell is telling the truth. He’s describing the future out loud, and the future is you holding four logins, trying to find a basketball game.
https://x.com/DaneMooreNBA/status/2082869449179197951
So who pays? The grandmother who kept FanDuel for one team and now needs a new app and a tutorial. The kid up the Range whose family can afford one subscription and has to pick which 55 games count. The casual fan, the one the NBA swears it’s chasing, who does this arithmetic once, decides it’s a pain in the ass, and finds something else to watch on a Tuesday. You don’t lose a fan base in a blackout. You lose it one $12.99 upcharge at a time, until following the team feels like a part-time job with a monthly invoice.
Is it more expensive and complicated than ever? The DAZN line item says no. Every other line item says yes. And the league keeps calling this team a community asset while it invoices the community four different ways to watch it. My grandfather had a word for an arrangement like that. You can’t print it, but you can read it in the fine print if you look.
