Orioles and Nationals square away final details in MASN dispute as RSN market crashes

It's been reported that the Orioles and Nationals have finally wrapped up their MASN television rights dispute, with the two sides coming to what looks to be a final agreement on Monday afternoon. The two sides have been in a pitched battle for what seems like forever, with the Orioles long having had the upper hand in regards to MASN revenues.

As reported on Monday, the Nationals will have their 2025 schedule televised by MASN under a new one-year contract, and will thereafter be free to seek alternative options for their TV broadcasts starting in 2026.

While it must feel good for the Nats to finally get out from under the Orioles thumb, it's probably the worst time in a very long time to be an MLB team in search of an RSN deal. We've seen the recent collapse of Diamond Sports Group, with a number of teams losing their rights deals in the process.

The Orioles and Nationals are finally breaking up over their television rights deal with MASN

The Padres and Diamondbacks lost their broadcast deals entirely and had to move to last-minute streaming deals just to make up some amount of revenue. The league did step in and provide funding for some of the lost revenue, but we're talking about tens of millions of dollars in revenue gone down the drain.

The Twins lost their RSN deal and their owners almost immediately started talking about putting the team up for sale. This is a real problem for the league and it's something commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners are going to have to have serious discussions about moving forward.

It's not clear what the future holds for MLB, but as we just saw with the divorce between the league and long-time broadcast partner ESPN, it'll probably get ugly before it gets better. MLB and ESPN decided to terminate their TV broadcast deal after the upcoming season.

It was reported that ESPN wanted MLB to take a 60% pay cut on the TV revenue package, from $550 million per year to $200 million. While MLB teams make significantly more money overall from local television contracts than they do from national ones, that kind of pay cut is an absurd ask. It's made even more egregious when you think about the deals some broadcast networks are handing out to leagues like the NBA and the NCAA.

Whether MLB eventually moves to a more streaming-focused product like what the NHL works with now, or they find another national broadcast partner and keep pushing for traditional cable broadcasts, we'll have to wait and see. Whatever they choose, the Orioles and Nationals will be embroiled in it one way or the other. But in the meantime, the Nats will have the freedom to get out from under the choke hold of MASN and find their own solution, at least until the league says otherwise.