For Baltimore Orioles fans, a long regional nightmare seems to be finally coming to an end. For Washington Nationals fans, it may just be beginning.
Last week, Maryland-based private equity billionaire David Rubenstein announced he had agreed to purchase the Orioles from the Angelos family, long regarded as one of baseball’s more miserly ownership groups. With a lineup full of young studs like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson and a new commitment to keep the team in Baltimore for decades to come, it’s safe to say the O’s have a bright future.
The same cannot be said for the region’s other baseball team. The Lerner family, who owns the Nationals, have been shopping the team since 2022—and with Rubenstein now getting the keys to the owner’s box in Camden Yards, another potential buyer is off the market.
With the Nationals’ ownership situation very much in limbo, Nats fans have reason to wonder about how the new boss in Baltimore could change things for their club, particularly when the two teams have been fighting in court for years over how to split broadcast rights revenues from regional sports network MASN.
Eric Fisher, a reporter for Front Office Sports, told Washingtonian that Rubenstein’s presence is not expected to change the terms of that split, which favors the Orioles and was part of a larger deal that allowed the Nationals, then the Montreal Expos, to move to DC prior to the 2005 season—a move that encroached upon a media market that had been solely the Orioles’ before.
Last year, the teams settled a long-standing lawsuit for the revenue split for the 2012 to 2016 seasons, and a subsequent lawsuit regarding fees for the 2017 to 2021 seasons was settled shortly afterward. Fisher said the existing legal precedent for a revenue split makes it unlikely that future litigation will take years to settle.
“If you’re coming in cold as a person interested in the Nats, the primary issue was not knowing what the year to year rights fees were,” Fisher says. “There’s a lot more clarity now than there was a year or two ago.”
While regional sports networks across the country have filed for bankruptcy in recent years, Fisher says that MASN is in less debt than some of the ones that went belly-up, and thus better positioned financially.
As for the Nats’ ownership situation, Fisher says that while he’s unsure of what the Lerners’ plans are, he thinks Rubenstein’s purchase of the Orioles could spur them to move faster. Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis reportedly has interest in buying a part or all of the team from the Lerners.
“You have a very good team up in Baltimore with clarity now—in a lot of ways, things are looking up for the Orioles,” Fisher said. “This would seem to throw the gauntlet of sorts for the Nationals operation.”
