Pickleball has claimed its first MLS casualty.
Nashville SC fans who tuned into FS1 for Saturday night’s match against DC United were greeted with paddle sports instead of soccer. The club’s national broadcast window was bumped to FS2 because the PPA Tour Finals in San Clemente, California, ran long.
“The start of our match can be seen on FS2 rather than FS1 due to Pickleball running late,” wrote the official Nashville SC account on X. “Yes. Pickleball.”
The start of our match can be seen on FS2 rather than FS1 due to Pickleball running late.
Yes. Pickleball.
— Nashville SC (@NashvilleSC) May 10, 2026
Fox Sports has carried PPA Tour events since 2021 and has built pickleball into a regular part of its programming across FS1 and FS2. Good for pickleball. Not so good for Nashville SC, who have seen this kind of thing before and will likely see it again.
Oh MLS is so back baby https://t.co/qV92PXgzyD
— Tim Hotze (@sing_electric) May 10, 2026
Reminder: the World Cup is taking place in the United States in roughly one month https://t.co/xHLdmuTgb5
— JaguarGator9 (@JaguarGator9NFL) May 10, 2026
I’ll never forget when I missed Georgia vs turkey because Fox wanted to broadcast bass fishing
Bass fishing. https://t.co/zDqd1szu0v
— cold viet man nascar guy fuotball (blue check) (@maqwelll) May 10, 2026
As we noted when Fox moved the end of the NASCAR Clash at Bowman Gray to FS2 for The Masked Singer back in February, the channel averages around 11,000 viewers and reaches roughly 49 million homes, compared to FS1’s 68 million. The FS2 programming lineup on a typical night is a mix of LIV Golf, horse racing, CONCACAF qualifiers, and copious amounts of replays of games from other Fox networks. A meaningful number of cable and satellite subscribers do not receive it at all, which means that for a segment of Nashville SC’s audience on Saturday, the match was effectively blacked out because a pickleball tournament went long.
Of course, coverage also continued on the Fox One and Fox Sports apps so streaming-conscious fans with access there had options. The game was also available on Apple TV, which carries every MLS match as part of the league’s revised deal with the streaming service that dropped the Season Pass paywall ahead of the 2026 season.. That’s something, at least. It’s also not what Nashville SC fans were told they were getting when they sat down Saturday night.
And people wish MLS wasn’t on Apple TV. https://t.co/wprsnDvdu6
— Favian Renkel (@FavianRenkel) May 10, 2026
Fox has been aggressive about filling its networks with programming across a growing number of sports. At some point, that means things bump into each other. Saturday night, MLS lost that fight to a sport that did not exist on TV five years ago.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.