Here's the thing. The Orioles controlled the media rights to the area before the Nationals came into town. Without the Nationals, the Orioles could have created their own network and sold their rights.
It is true that selling the rights of two teams is more valuable than the rights of selling one team. After all, some people want to watch the Nationals and others want to watch the Orioles. But the rights of the first team are more valuable than the second. If there are no Nationals then fans can only watch the Orioles but at least they can watch baseball. If there are no Nationals and no Orioles then fans aren't able to watch any baseball.
That means if the Orioles only got half of MASN they'd be getting hosed. That isn't fair compensation for the damage done to their media rights let alone the damage done to their attendance. Maybe the deal should have started at 66% and 33% but 50-50 isn't fair in the slightest and would never have been accepted.
I've talked about this stuff enough, but I'll add a couple of comments and then leave it alone.
1) The Orioles had crushed much of their OPaCY attendance and regional coverage before the Nats showed up. They were under-leveraging the entire market and the Nationals, through an MLB funded startup of MASN, gave them longer tentacles into areas that had forgotten about the Orioles. So what you're saying about the Orioles 'region' are technically true in theory, but the application of reality says the Orioles were doing much less there.....in other words 90(to 66% over time)% of those regions w/Nats > 100% of those regions without Nats. That's also not considering the 75M that Angelos was handed to start MASN, which, without the Nats, he'd have had to fund himself.
2) I agree that there is (should be) an uneven split favoring the Orioles given their initial rights to the region.
3) It feels to me like both sides are more worried about winning (and screwing the other side) than working something out (win-win) and building powerhouses 47 miles apart.
BOTH sides benefit from a revenue generating MASN, and BOTH sides win when you hide money from revenue sharing....the issue is that the current construct benefits the Orioles, but not the Nationals. I'm confident that MLB would love for this to be resolved by the teams and not the courts and they have been paying off the Nationals to try and keep them happy (or whatever the word is).
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Here's a win-win solution, not that anyone cares (actually it's win-win for the Orioles and Nats....MLB gets screwed, but it gets put behind them)
1) Move the % ownership to 65%/35% now. The endstate in 18 (whatever) years is ~67/33 so the Orioles/Angelos agree to move slightly beyond the endstate today. You move the clock forward 18 years and give a little extra that effectively eliminates the revenue consequences between the MASN splits and MLB revenue sharing.
2) Agree to a 20 year revolving compensation profile for both teams with a waiver against MLB assessment. This establishes a 20 year (or pick a number) profile that stays at that year profile (ie each year that passes, you sign up for the new year 20) and protects both teams from having to share a 'fair' % of their MASN deal. The annual value would certainly be under-valued.....you probably start with something like today at 35M (each) and allow it to go up a small % each year. Tie it annually or at the new 'year 20' to whatever economic factors you're comfortable with (everyone agrees). MLB has already built a lockout for for the largest clubs at something like 180M....you are essentially building a lower lockout for sharing for MASN only. Bottom line is you can blow up the revenue side and you don't have to share.
3) Allow MASN ownership to separate from the teams to the ownership groups WITH a sale clause. I thought this was already the case as apparently every other RSN works, but if they are tied to the team
(let's assume they are), then allow them to separate, like everyone else. To protect this agreement, you have to have an arbitrated MASN value so that the is team to be sold WITH the network (Orioles + MASN%, or Nats + MASN%) or the agreement voids and is negotiated as any other separate media deal. You can't allow an ownership group to walk away from the team (sell) with no accountability on the fabricated value of the RSN.
4) Angelos gets a lump sum payment for moving to the endstate, paid by MLB. This was always a bad deal from MLB's perspective but they apparently thought they'd get out of it at some point. MLB is awash in cash so Angelos gets another 100M
(or whatever....some % of whatever the 90% to 65% value assessment is)....so what....sometimes you pay to clean up the perceived mistakes of the past (ask Andrew Friedman). Maybe pay it out over X years to make it palatable.
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This basically cleans up all of the Angelos and Lerner issues and while MLB gets screwed (again), they get to close up the books and clear the court case and be done with it.
....of course.....all sides seem more committed to the fight.
