Major League Baseball on Monday announced a settlement in the dispute between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals regarding the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, an entity created to facilitate the Nationals’ move to D.C. yet one that hamstrung its ability to maximize revenues.
In announcing an end to the dispute, played out in courts and in MLB negotiations for the majority of the Nationals’ stint in the nation’s capital that began in 2005, MLB says the Nationals are free to pursue their own TV rights beginning with the 2026 season – a key development that may eventually facilitate the sale of the franchise.
MLB awarded the former Montreal Expos franchise to the Lerner family, which paid $450 million for it in 2006; the Nationals are now worth an estimated $2 billion, according to Forbes.
In 2022, the team said it would entertain offers to purchase the club, only for owner Mark Lerner to announce in February 2024, after tepid interest from potential buyers, that the club was no longer for sale.
Now, a significant hurdle to any sale has been removed. A potential suitor for both the team and its TV rights would be Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics owner Ted Leonsis, whose Monumental Sports and Entertainment broadcasts games on its regional sports network.
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The MASN dispute, which involved more than a decade of litigation, took another twist in January when an MLB committee announced the Orioles would pay the Nationals $320 million for rights between 2022 and 2026. While financial terms were not disclosed, it would appear the final year of that agreement has been terminated.
MASN was created to mollify then-Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who forfeited territorial rights to the D.C. area in exchange for control of the Nationals’ TV rights. MASN is owned and operated by the Orioles, and disputes between the clubs over rights fee payments began almost immediately after the arrangement was in place.
Angelos’s family reached an agreement to sell the club to private equity baron David Rubenstein in January 2024; the elder Angelos died in March 2024.
Mark Lerner recently told the Washington Post that, after another winter with no major investments to the active roster, his family was ‘in it for the long haul’ now with the Nationals, ‘unless something different happens along the way.’
We’ll eventually find out if Monday’s settlement qualifies.