The long and winding road that ultimately brought Major League Baseball to Washington contained more than its share of bizarre turns. But Thursday’s lawsuit from Comcast SportsNet (CSN) against MLB and the Baltimore Orioles now creates arguably the ultimate baseball twilight zone moment: a fight in which Washingtonians are rooting for Orioles owner Peter Angelos to win.
A day after CSN filed suit in Montgomery County Circuit Court against the Orioles, MLB and the new Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) claiming legal breach of its TV carriage agreement with the Orioles, lawyers for both sides yesterday continued preparations for what promises to be a bitter and extended legal battle.
The lawsuit itself stems primarily from terms of the Orioles’ distribution agreement with CSN, as the network contends the Orioles’ announced plans to move its local pay TV games from CSN to MASN in 2007 violates CSN’s legal right to match contract terms, as well as an exclusive negotiating window not expiring until November.
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More broadly and fundamentally, the dispute is about asserting control of the Mid-Atlantic TV marketplace. Angelos, freshly minted with the Washington Nationals’ TV rights under the MASN umbrella, is eager to create a dominant and lucrative sports TV empire on his terms. Comcast executives, meanwhile, say the Washington-Baltimore region would be “most efficiently served with a single regional sports network,” a rather curious statement. Several other major U.S. markets of comparable size, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Denver, have at least two and as many as four RSNs.
Within the Washington area, neither side is a sympathetic figure. MLB delayed the return of baseball to the District for years, and Angelos fought it bitterly. As for CSN, its corporate parent, Comcast Corp. is a cable industry giant and even executives there admit the company is one its customers often love to hate.
To that end, the Orioles and MLB are likely enjoying a majority of local support in the fight, given that the lawsuit effectively delays the addition of Nationals games on TV beyond the roughly 70 games left on the schedule of WDCA-TV (Channel 20), as well as ongoing efforts to sell the club out of MLB ownership. But that edge is hardly secure.
“It’s tough to know what to think,” said D.C. Councilman Jack Evans, who has lobbied MLB for more TV exposure for the Nationals. “If this is just about Comcast putting the screws to the Nationals and Orioles, then a pox on their house. But if Comcast can get a better deal for the Nationals than what they’re getting now from Baltimore, then I’m all for it. I’m watching this closely, but I don’t know really know where this is going.”
The Nationals will receive a $20 million rights fee this season from the Orioles-controlled MASN and security from network fiscal losses should they occur, measures Evans and other District officials have publicly supported.
The legal scrum, in many ways, will serve as a repeat of brutal wars both the New York Yankees and Mets fought to establish their own regional sports networks. The Mets case, in particular, is interesting as the club is breaking away from a contractual relationship with Cablevision Corp. to start a new network with the assistance of Comcast and Time Warner.
The network is set to start next season under Comcast management, though Cablevision, which similarly argued a breach of contract, is still seeking a trial against the Mets.
“This is about a monopolist in Comcast fighting to keep its monopoly,” said Vince Wladika, MASN spokesman. “It’s apparently OK for them to be the second, third or fourth RSN player coming into a market, but they don’t like it when someone comes in to give them competition.”
Comcast executives say the Mets dispute does not mirror the Orioles battle, as unlike Baltimore, the Mets paid $54 million to exit out of the last six years of a long-term distribution agreement with Cablevision, a buyout the Mets argue gave them a wide range of options for their TV rights. Comparatively, Comcast says its firm right-to-match contract provisions with the Orioles mandate several things from the club, including a 30-day window to match any offer arriving after Nov. 1, 2005, for the team’s TV rights.
And Comcast, which in the lawsuit essentially seeks to shut down MASN, holds another edge in that an Angelos-MLB win does not guarantee any carriage of MASN with the region’s dominant cable provider.
“This is all about leverage,” said John Mansell, sports analyst for Kagan Media Associates. “I think we’re all fascinated to see where this goes.”
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