New Delhi, July 30 -- For anyone who watched the Knicks win the championship this June on an MSG Networks feed piped through a cable box they have had since 2018, the question that has been building for years just got an answer. The regional sports network model, the architecture of rights fees, carriage deals, and cable bundling that has delivered local NBA, NHL, and MLB games to tens of millions of American households for three decades, is being replaced. DAZN, a British streaming platform that most of those households have never heard of, is doing the replacing.

the New York Knicks, New York Yankees, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Brooklyn Nets, New Jersey Devils, and Buffalo Sabres, comprising the commercial center of the most...