Major League Baseball announced Monday that the longstanding MASN TV dispute between the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles has finally come to an end.
The media rights fight between the two franchises extends all the way back to the Nationals’ move to DC from Montreal in 2005. Due to concerns that the Nationals’ presence in the area would harm the Orioles financially, part of the solution was to have Nationals games broadcast on MASN locally, a network owned by the Orioles.
Washington’s stake in the network, initially just 10 percent, has slowly increased over the years. However, the team has believed the rights fees MASN wanted to pay were not fair market value, leading to litigation and several court appearances. More court battles were expected until this announcement, which keeps the Nationals on MASN for the 2025 season but frees them up to explore alternatives after that.
Per Monday’s statement from MLB:
The Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles jointly announce the final resolution of all issues related to the MASN dispute.
For the 2025 season, Washington Nationals games will continue to be televised locally exclusively by the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) under a new, one-year contract. After this term, the Nationals will be free to explore alternatives for their television rights for the 2026 season and beyond. As part of the settlement, all disputes related to past media rights between the Nationals, Orioles, and MASN have been resolved, and all litigation will be dismissed.
The news that the Nationals will be up for grabs from a TV perspective comes a few months after Ted Leonsis, owner of the NHL’s Washington Capitals, NBA’s Washington Wizards, NBA G League’s Capital City Go-Go, and WNBA’s Washington Mystics, made it known he still has interest in one day owning the Nats. Not only does the MASN dispute being solved make the team more attractive to a potential buyer, but it also gives Leonsis the opportunity to purchase rights to broadcasting games on Monumental Sports Network.
Currently, Monumental does not have much compelling summer programming. Leonsis divulged some of the more nuanced strategy behind getting involved with the Nats in an interview last fall.
“We don’t want to buy a baseball team so I can get programming on the network,” Leonsis explained. “We want to buy a team to get programming on the network to build a big business to invest into each of the teams so that we can win and compete for championships.”
He added, “Owning a baseball team would double the amount of games and be year-round. You can see, from a business standpoint, that’s important. But why it’s important for the team is, how can you define yourself as a big market team? How can you attract free agents? How can you keep really good young players from going somewhere else? …So I look at the business side as a way to generate the resources and dollars to position us as a big, important market, where I think we should be. We want to be a destination where players want to come, and you need to have the resources to do it.”
Much of Leonsis’ explanation likely sounds great to Nationals fans as they’ve seen star player after star player depart the franchise over the last decade. Many of those players, including Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Max Scherzer, and Juan Soto, have ended up on direct rivals in the NL East Division.
Leonsis reportedly offered over $2 billion to buy the Nationals in 2023, but ultimately, the team’s current owners, the Lerners, rebuffed him and recently committed to the “long haul” with the club.
The Nationals also made other news on Monday after a Forbes report was released that the team plans on selling stadium naming rights and jersey sponsorship space by the end of the year. The club’s home park, Nationals Park, was built in 2008, and the franchise has resisted selling off its naming rights since.
The Nationals are one of just eight teams to not have a sponsor on their stadium and were one of just seven teams last season without a jersey patch sponsorship. Both moves should open up massive new revenue streams for the team.
