Grow: The lawsuit that won’t go away: The Nats, the Orioles, and MASN

From SABR member Nathaniel Grow at FanGraphs on May 9, 2016:

One can be excused for having lost track of the many twists and turns in the long-running broadcast-rights-fee dispute between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals. Over the past four years, the two teams have waged an extensive legal battle over how much the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) ought to be paying the Nationals for the team’s local television rights, with both sides capable of pointing to various victories and defeats along the way.

For those interested in a longer recap of the many ins and outs of the dispute, we have previously covered all of the gory details here on a number of occasions over the last several years. In short, though, under the terms of the 2005 agreement in which Baltimore allowed the Nationals to move to Washington, D.C., the teams agreed that they would renegotiate the television rights fees that MASN — the vast majority of which is owned by the Orioles — would have to pay the Nationals every five years.

Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-lawsuit-that-wont-go-away-the-nats-os-and-masn/



Originally published: May 9, 2016. Last Updated: May 9, 2016.