Nationals-Orioles MASN dispute to return to MLB panel

The Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals are at odds over their respective positions following the latest legal ruling in a long-running case concerning the latter Major League Baseball franchise’s revenue payments from US regional cable-television broadcaster MASN.

The New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division in Manhattan yesterday (Thursday) ruled that a committee of MLB team owners and executives can decide how much money the Nationals is due from the Orioles for the television broadcasts of their games on MASN, which is controlled by the latter team.

In November 2015, a New York State Supreme Court justice rejected an arbitration decision from the MLB panel that said MASN owes the Nationals $298m (€261.5m) for the team’s television rights between 2012 and 2016. The case will now revert back to the MLB panel, although its members have changed since the initial verdict.

The Nationals have called Thursday’s ruling “a major legal victory”, although the Orioles have contested this assertion. “The Nationals are gratified that the appeals court recognised the importance of enforcing contractual arbitration agreements,” attorney Stephen Neuwirth, who argued for the Nationals, said, according to the Associated Press news agency. “We look forward to finally having the rights fees determined in the forum the parties chose.”

Thomas Hall, an attorney for MASN, said the broadcaster and the Orioles will appeal the decision to return the case to the MLB panel. The appeal would be heard by New York’s top court, the Court of Appeals in Albany, and could lead to yet more delays in the case.

“To my knowledge, for the first time in history, an internal MLB arbitration was vacated by the court and was done so unanimously,” Arnold Weiner, an attorney for the Orioles, said. “It’s one thing to declare victory, as the Nationals do, and it’s another thing to have actually won, which they didn’t.”

The two teams are said to be apart by more than $100m on the revenue the Nationals should receive for television rights in two five-year periods, 2012-16 and 2017-21. MASN carries both teams’ games and was formed in 2005 when the Montreal Expos moved to Washington to become the Nationals, entering what had been Baltimore’s exclusive broadcast territory since 1972.