Ahead of Opening Day in 2022, the Lerner family let it be known that the Washington Nationals were up for sale. In the time since there has been no sale and little movement. But could the agreement between the Nats and Orioles over television rights fees change that? It is possible, Washington Post reporter Chelsea Janes told Kevin Sheehan.
"What my understanding was for the last year plus was that this [settlement] and the litigation around MASN and the uncertainty about how much a potential buyer was gonna get from TV rights was a huge roadblock [to a sale]," Janes told Sheehan.
"And I think we can all say the quiet part out loud that the potential buyer is Ted Leonsis. And he made an offer of over $2 billion before this was settled. He tried to buy MASN and the Orioles said it wasn't for sale. So he's been kind of trying to buy his way out of this problem for a little bit here. And now the problem seems a little bit simpler."
Janes pointed out that with the decline in cable television subscribers, the rights fees that would be given to the teams are going to be going "way down" and the fees will be "less important to the revenue streams of these teams just because it's gonna be less money as people cut chords."
And since the Orioles appear to have relented and agreed on this five-year period covering 2012 to 2016, maybe the negotiations over the next five-year period will be a little bit smoother, and Janes added, maybe Leonsis thinks "Ok, this just got a little easier."
From what the Post reporter has heard the Wizards' and Captials' owner is still the front-runner, but there is still a lot to be figured out.
"I don't know if it happens faster, I don't know if it makes him more eager to buy the team. I don't think it affects the value of the team a lot, but I do think it's one more roadblock that you clear out of the way and maybe it paves the way for that to happen a little more quickly," Janes told Sheehan. "But I still don't know when it happens. I would assume by Opening Day next year, but I would've assumed it woulda happened by Opening Day this year and it didn't."
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Janes added that the Opening Day 2024 'target' is what everyone hopes as the "purgatory that the Nats are in right now is sort of untennible."
Part of that has to do with the one-year contracts for general manager Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez and the state of the team's ongoing rebuild.
Of course, this is a sale to Leonsis, it will require him to get together the financing to purchase the Nationals, will probably require him to restructure some of the financings around his other teams, and will require him to go to both the NHL and NBA to get their approval in addition to winning the approval of the other 29 owners in MLB.
One interesting note from Janes was that "the Lerner family has been pretty adamant" that they wanted to sell the Nats to a person who understood the D.C. market and would "appreciate it in a D.C. context and what the Nationals mean to D.C. and obviously Ted Leonsis could do this."
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