As Opening Day of the 2025 season is upon us, one of the longest running legal disputes between Major League Baseball owners appears to finally be over.

MLB recently announced that the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals have settled their media-rights disputes, ending a 20-year battle that has been in court for a decade and ultimately reaches back to 2005.

As part of the settlement, the Nationals will remain on the Orioles-owned regional sports network MASN (Mid-Atlantic Sports Network) through the conclusion of the 2025 season but will then receive full control over their TV rights. According to a news release from MLB, the Nationals will be “free to explore alternatives for their television rights for the 2026 season and beyond.” This is significant news because it will mark the first time since the Nationals arrived in Washington D.C. that the team will be able to control where and how their games will be broadcasted.

MASN was created in 2005 as a compromise to then-Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who forfeited territorial rights to the D.C. area in exchange for control of the Nationals' TV rights. To “protect the Orioles from any adverse effects caused by the relocation,” as MLB once described it, Nats games were broadcasted by the Orioles-owned TV network. Almost immediately after the arrangement was in place, disputes between the clubs over rights fee payments began.

After more than a decade of litigation, this saga took another twist in January when an MLB committee announced the Orioles would pay the Nationals $320 million for rights between 2022 and 2026. While the terms were not disclosed, it would appear the final year of that agreement has been terminated given the most recent announcement.

“As part of the settlement, all disputes related to past media rights between the Nationals, Orioles, and MASN have been resolved, and all litigation will be dismissed,” MLB said in its news release.

Both Baltimore and Washington are run by different individuals than they were when the dispute started. David Rubenstein bought the team from the Angelos family last year. Ted Lerner, Mark Lerner’s father, died in 2023. The league itself owned the Nats when they moved from Montreal, selling to the Lerners in 2006.

“We are excited to have this longstanding issue resolved and look forward to the season ahead,” David Rubenstein said in a statement. The Nationals declined to comment.

While this is significant development in and of itself, it also has massive ramifications for the future of the Nationals franchise.

In recent years, the Lerner Family has contemplated selling the franchise. However, Mark Lerner said his family decided against selling around this time last year. Whether or not the MASN dispute had anything to do with that decision is unknown, but if the family goes down that road again, the team’s “freedom” from the MASN relationship should help. That being said, like many teams across the league, the Nats’ TV rights are not worth as much as they were in the past. By settling now, the teams and the league essentially avoid further fighting in public over just how much the worth of those rights have fallen.

It's no secret that TV rights are a particularly sensitive topic for baseball owners. The worth of most clubs’ rights has dipped in recent years amid the cord-cutting trend and decline of RSNs. While certain clubs like the Dodgers that own their own RSN have been somewhat immune from this dip, most clubs are coping with significant declines in TV revenues. One of Rob Manfred’s biggest priorities is to bundle all of the teams’ rights together and sell them to a streaming platform. While this will certainly be easier said than done, Manfred believes teams will be able to recoup some of their TV losses over the long haul if the league can reach new deals with streaming companies in coming years.

Moving forward, it now bears close watching whether the Nationals will now align with the Ted Leonsis controlled Monumental Sports Network. Leonsis Monumental Sports Network broadcasts games for the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, and Washington Mystics. Leonsis is close to Mark Lerner, and Lerner is part of the ownership group at Monumental Sports & Entertainment. Leonsis, meanwhile, has expressed interest acquiring both baseball rights for his RSN, and potentially the Nationals franchise if the Lerner family goes back down the path of selling the team in the coming years.

From an on-field perspective, the Nationals are trying to emerge from a long rebuild following their World Series title in 2019. Due to the COVID impacted season in 2020, the team was unable to enjoy the financial windfall that comes in the aftermath of winning the World Series. In addition, the team has been hamstrung by Stephen Strasburg’s $245 million contract and the key departures of Juan Soto, Trea Turner, and Max Scherzer.

While the Nationals young talent appears promising, having the financial flexibility to spend on impactful free agents will certainly be important if the team wants to compete in the difficult National League East. The control over their TV rights along with a potential sale could help in that regard.

Brendan Bell is a 2L at SMU Dedman School of Law. He can be followed on Twitter (X) @_bbell5