After more than a decade of dispute and debate over precisely how much the Orioles and Washington Nationals each were owed by the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network for a five-year period from 2012 to 2016, the two clubs have reached a settlement, according to The Associated Press.
The network, majority owned by the Baltimore club, will pay both teams about $100 million, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because neither team had made an announcement.
The settlement closes a lengthy, bitter chapter between the teams during which they had disagreed over the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars. But it does not necessarily end the quarrel between the clubs. Going forward, they must agree on how much they each are owed for other five-year periods, including from 2017 to 2021.
Earlier this year, attorneys for the teams argued their cases in New York’s highest court. The clubs previously had battled over how much the Nationals were owed in television rights fees and a Major League Baseball arbitration committee composed of three team executives, the Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee, had twice mediated. But the Orioles argued in the New York Court of Appeals that the arbitration had been biased and that a separate, independent arbiter would be better suited for the dispute.
The Nationals, in turn, argued that the teams were simply following an agreement that both teams previously signed. The New York court sided unanimously with the Nationals but said the arbitration committee overstepped its power by determining a money award because it did not have the authority to decide fees for nonpayment. That likely would send the litigation into “extra innings,” Justice Madeline Singas wrote in the court’s opinion.
Those extra innings, however, now appear to be cut short.
The Orioles declined to comment.
In February, John Angelos, CEO of both MASN and the Orioles, said: “I think it’s resolvable today, tomorrow — I’m oversimplifying — separate and apart from that appellate track. I mean, that’s litigation. My goal, as you might be totally surprised to hear, is to never be around any litigation again. You don’t need litigation to solve problems. You just need good partners. And we can sort that out and solve it very quickly.”
The Washington Post first reported the settlement agreement between the teams.
MASN, the network that airs both Orioles and Nationals games, was created in 2005 when the Montreal Expos moved to Washington. Based on an agreement from that time, the Baltimore and Washington club co-own the network with the Orioles receiving a majority stake in ownership and a majority of profits as compensation for the Nationals moving into their exclusive coverage area.
The clubs split rights fees paid out by MASN, but 90% of the network’s profits originally went to the Orioles, while the Nationals received 10%. That figure changes by one percentage point each year and is scheduled to culminate with the Orioles receiving 67% and the Nationals getting 33% in 2032.
However, the teams have long disagreed about how much each team was owed. In 2011, they could not come to a consensus on how much they should receive for the five-year period from 2012 to 2016. MASN paid the Nationals $198 million, but the Washington club argued it should be $475 million. An MLB arbitration committee decided that figure should have been $298 million.
The Orioles appealed that arbitration decision, which was thrown out by a New York judge because of “evident partiality” in the Nationals’ law firm (which had represented MLB and other teams, whose executives were on the arbitration committee, previously). Again, the dispute went before a different MLB arbitration committee, which came to a similar figure, roughly $100 million more than the Nationals had been paid.
The Orioles and Nationals fought over that amount until recently, when a settlement was reached.
Baltimore Sun reporters Nathan Ruiz and Jeff Barker and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
This story might be updated.
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