Ted Leonsis, majority owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment (the Washington Capitals, Wizards, Mystics and Verizon Center) will apparently sign a deal with Comcast that keeps his teams on CSN-Mid Atlantic through 2032, according to Sports Business Journal.
As part of the deal, Leonsis gets a third of the network. He had created “Monumental Network” that broadcast video content related to his teams and seemingly to get CSN concerned he’d start his own RSN. It looks like it worked.
I speculated that Leonsis could be the big winner in the Nationals-MASN/Angelos/Orioles dispute since having winter sports programming would seemingly be desirable for either MASN or CSN. John Ourand, the SBJ article’s author and avowed Baltimore Orioles fanboy, says that MASN was never that interested.
As for MASN and Angelos, they won in court last week (The Post) as their battle against the Nats and Washingtonians continues. MASN/Angelos still haven’t increased their payment to the Nats over broadcast rights that were due in 2012. The Orioles would get the same. We can only hope when new values are set, they come in even higher because all that this does is make MLB have to restart the process which could push the values higher. It’s an odd tactic for them and probably based only in spite rather than sensible business practices because why wouldn’t you want to have two more major teams with roughly 170 available games, most of which are not during baseball season? I guess that’s the Oriole Way at work – bad people making bad decisions.
I’m pleased that Leonsis, who may to try to use Baltimore as leverage against DC for upgrades/new arena in the 2020s, didn’t get in bed with Angelos, but disappointed that this likely means I’ll need to stick with cable if I want to watch the Caps and Wiz.
More on the Nats tomorrow…