Comcast SportsNet yesterday levied a new round of verbal blows against Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, saying he deliberately constructed a scenario to keep the Washington Nationals out of most local TV homes.
The anti-Angelos invective from the Bethesda-based regional sports network arrived as it filed a motion in Montgomery County Circuit Court challenging the Orioles’ recent motion to dismiss CSN’s lawsuit against the club.
CSN says the Orioles’ planned move of its local pay-TV games to the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) in 2007 violates key terms of an existing distribution pact between the two entities and is seeking a halt to further development of the Orioles-controlled MASN. The Orioles say MASN is not a third-party entity as CSN claims, and that it retains the legal right to take its TV distribution in-house after next season.
At stake is effective control over sports television in the region.
While the bitter dispute continues to fester, Comcast Corp. refuses to place MASN on its cable systems, leaving the network and the Nationals games it shows to a much more limited carriage footprint through DirecTV and RCN Cable. A hearing on the Orioles’ motion to dismiss is scheduled July 27 in Rockville.
“Peter Angelos and the Orioles have knowingly created a situation where cable carriers predictably would not carry MASN, and thus, many Washington Nationals games,” a Comcast statement reads. “This is particularly regrettable given that, unlike Mr. Angelos, Comcast supported the return of Major League Baseball to Washington, D.C., and offered to broadcast the Nats’ games on far more favorable terms than is the case with MASN.”
The Nationals currently receive a $20 million annual rights fee from MASN, and their new owner, when he arrives later this year, also will acquire a 10 percent stake in the network that will ultimately grow to 33 percent.
MASN executives predictably bristled at the CSN accusations, particularly since the Orioles claim to need full distribution of both clubs on MASN to make the venture economically viable.
“Comcast’s filing of today is a deliberate distortion of the facts and the law,” MASN executives said in a statement. “No matter how Comcast spins its web, it cannot construct a legally supportable claim. … By personally attacking a Major League Baseball owner who challenges Comcast’s monopoly, Comcast has again proven that it is only concerned about protecting its monopoly position.”
Much of the actual Orioles-CSN legal dispute centers on a 1996 contract that still governs the team’s distribution on the network. In the pact, CSN retains until November a right to match any third-party offer for the Orioles local TV rights. The Orioles say TCR Inc., a team subsidiary now doing business as MASN, is the contracting party to that agreement. And as such, the Orioles claim no third party exists and the TV rights are simply not being contracted out after the CSN pact ends.
Comcast disagrees vehemently, and in the 53-page filing yesterday, cites an extensive list of case law seeking to bolster its case for TCR being a third party and the Orioles as the contracting entity with CSN.
“The defendants ask this court to bless an attempt at a corporate shell game devised to evade and render meaningless essential contractual obligations owed by the Orioles, and to trample valuable contractual rights for which CSN (formerly Home Team Sports) paid enormous sums,” the filing reads.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.