Terrible deal but one that had to be made or no Washington team. If memory serves.
The status at the time appeared to be that there was a franchise in Baltimore whose only defined and legally enforceable rights related to relocation (Baltimore and the counties directly adjacent to it) whose existence was granted by another market (D.C.). The official MLB relocation territory has been in the city in which the team is and the counties the touch that city. For the Orioles, that’s Howard and Anne Arundel county as their southwest limit. Additionally, media market was not something owned by the Orioles under MLB rules.
The NFL had something similar when the Redskins were technically the de facto team of the south media-wise in the absence of another one for years. When teams would come in such as Atlanta and New Orleans and later Carolina and Tennessee, the Redskins weren’t owed anything, but had just been able to get while the getting was good.
When the Nationals (which was a primary designation at the time that the baseball Browns moved to Baltimore) / Senators left for Texas, Baltimore made the most of it and marketed to the growing national capital area for a period of time to get an improved media share, but they were not guaranteed anything under baseball’s existing rules. The Baltimore owner / lawyer appeared to bluff Selig into cutting him a sweetheart media rights deal (the three previous owners had only requested that a relocated or expansion DC team be in the National League). Evidently protective of MLB’s anti-trust exemption and reportedly lawsuit-averse (potentially due to discovery), Selig added on as a condition of MLB’s relocation back to the area a media rights construct to the benefit of that owner. However, going by the strict rules, they apparently were not even owed that.
While MLB was caretaking the Expos after the Loria/Henry switcheroo, Angelos evidently figured he had nothing to lose by making a play for free money in perpetuity. Selig was seemingly incentivized by a goal of not allowing in ownership in a major market who would spend freely aided by their media rights situation (remember how he said he set a sales price figure rather than letting a bidding war escalate). I recall some reports at the time that when the team was to end up in DC proper rather than Virginia – – the latter of which Selig apparently preferred according to later comments from relocation committee head Reinsdorf, Angelos reportedly used that and being on the same side of the Potomac to argue for the additional protection (sic) needed of this deal. Another pot sweetener appears to have been the rights fees arrangement.
With the incoming owner incentivized to not sue over a deal that gave rights where there were none to the detriment of the D.C. market franchise -- or they wouldn't get the team, what seemed like such an unethical deal was hatched. Selig was reportedly not ignorant of this absence of rights, nor that he also had the power of the best interest of baseball clause to box in Angelos on the matter if necessary to a great degree, as Angelos had no veto. However, I recall there was some pointing at the time to Selig’s evident reluctance to get into any potential legal back-and-forth when a path of least resistance could be found, especially one decade after federal judge Padova ruled in Piazza vs. MLB that baseball’s antitrust exemption applied only to player contracts.
Moreover, Baltimore has an adequate market from which to draw, especially since the lion’s share of the Nationals’ fanbase reportedly comes from Virginia. A smart owner would focus on Maryland as well as south central Pennsylvania, much of which is about an hour from Baltimore. Arguably, the current Orioles owner has seemed to have an outsized focus on the team that returned to the DC market rather than on his own team, judging by the results.
Aagin, the fact this was a return to an existing market rather than a level of encroachment where Baltimore already had the media rights to begin with further undercut the supposed logic or need for compensation and redress. That’s especially the case when there was a team in this defined market that existed at the time that the Browns moved to Baltimore.
It’s bad enough that what looks like such a corrupted construct as this doesn’t seem to have ever been adequately challenged. For MASN/Angelos to still be able to not actually have paid their share that they agreed to is just pathetically ridiculous.
