If anything, the Nats have a little bit of leverage on the MASN deal now. If the Lerners wanted to be jerks, they could threaten to hold the Os to the current terms and would be losing money on MASN. That would just create more uncertainty and lawsuits though probably.
MASN is basically irrelevant. It will bring in money for a few more years (if they can sign a deal with Comcast), and the two teams will agree on some kind of split of that revenue, and then it will be done as a significant money maker.
The more interesting insight in that article is this:
If the future is having the Nats/O's in market games included in a national streaming package, then who cares about MASN. A lot of this is going to depend on how the Bally's bankruptcy final terms to see if Manfred can get them all on-board.
A streaming service is the future. I would absolutely add that package to my Youtube TV or Google TV.
