on Mr. Angelos in the courtroom war, who has used it as a weapon in his defense – or is it an attack? – on his MLB partners in the nastiest lawsuit most business journalists have ever seen in sports.
That’s really the dirty little secret of all of this “war” between Peter G. Angelos and MASN with the other 29 MLB owners over all of this money.
They’ve spent the last five years dancing over the legitimate and “fair” rights fees for the Nationals. Essentially, they’re arguing about money that Angelos completely controls because all of the money is going to MASN.
It’s always portrayed as “Angelos vs. the Nationals.”
But no one ever discusses or writes about what it would mean for the Orioles revenue spigot.
If Angelos didn’t own MASN, he’d be the one suing MASN.
If Fox or ESPN or Comcast was hoarding revenue designed for his baseball team, he’d be raising holy hell and suing everyone in sight.
All of this takes place while all of the money sits and flows monthly into Angelos’ MASN bank account. And every time he tells the courts that the Nationals should get less money, he’s also telling Orioles fans that their baseball team should remain a “small market” team while he pockets more than $50 million per year in straight profit from MASN that doesn’t go anywhere near the baseball team(s).
As you’ve read, the whole premise of MASN was to generate more revenues for the Orioles to spend on baseball players. That story was told repeatedly by Angelos to PressBox, The Examiner and The Sun in 2006 and 2007 – before he realized just how much money this network would throw off and his ability to keep it away from the franchises.
He’s been dancing for five years.
The baseball teams aren’t seeing the money. That’s very clear.
But this is just another lie in a world of lies spinning around Peter G. Angelos and his tenure as the owner of the Baltimore Orioles.
Angelos has tangled his partners up in the courts over the past three years after Bud Selig chastised them and chided them over and over again in the media to make a fair deal. It’s actually in the Major League Baseball ownership partnership – in writing and in spirit – to not sue other members of their antitrust country club. Of course, Angelos has flaunted this arrangement and run them all into courts to try to get “his” money.
It all comes down to this: MASN is generating more than $203 million in revenue this year.
How much of it is “fair” for the Nationals and Orioles to expect from a network that has no other properties or significance beyond showing ESPN News most of the time when it’s not showing insignificant rerun baseball games as “MASN Classic” programming?
And who gets to decide what’s “fair market value” for either team’s TV rights?
In Chapter 3 we’ll explore in greater details the roots of this mess and the sticky circumstances that found the Montreal Expos landing in Washington, D.C. a decade ago
