Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), the regional sports network (RSN) jointly owned by the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals franchises of baseball’s MLB, has ended its dispute with US nationwide cable TV carrier Comcast.
The network, which operates in several US states in and around Maryland and the District of Columbia (Washington DC), had been under threat of being blacklisted from Comcast.
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MASN and MASN2 networks will now continue, however, on the Comcast platform courtesy of the last-minute deal.
This deal does not maintain the terms of the previous deal, with MASN now relocated from Comcast’s basic cable package deal to the pricier Ultimate TV package, almost $20 per month more expensive.
Despite the rising terms of the deal, it is one that will be welcomed by both parties for the stability it will bring to the MASN broadcast offering. This stability is necessary for the teams, with the Orioles’ Angelos family ownership group reportedly in the middle of a sale, while the Nationals have only just come off the market.
Furthermore, as MASN does not have a direct-to-consumer option, maintaining the Comcast deal is essential for the service’s existence, especially given the issues it has gone through since its foundation.
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By GlobalDataIt was only in December that the Orioles and Nationals ended a 12-year-long TV rights saga between the two through the agreement of a $304 million media rights fee deal for MASN broadcasts.
The fees, which amount to $60.8 million annually per team, relate to the rights period between 2017 and 2021 and equate to the market value for the rights defined by a trio of MLB team owners that formed the Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee in July 2024.
Media rights payments for the 2022-26 period have yet to be discussed, intimating the potential for further conflict between the two, however, the two have at least reached a status quo for the last rights period.
