And in some ways, deciding not to sell now makes as much or more sense than putting the franchise on the market in April 2022, when the Lerners first explored a sale. As Lerner told The Post, “We’ve just decided that it’s not the time or place for it.”
Here are five reasons the timing might not have felt right for the Lerner family — and why it might be better a few years from now.
The reboot is still in progress
While the state of a team’s roster does not necessarily affect a franchise’s value dramatically, it certainly influences appeal. The Baltimore Orioles, who recently saw an ownership shift, could pitch themselves as entering a new golden era thanks to a talented young roster honed during a brutal half decade of losing. In terms of appeal on the field, that franchise was never going to have more promise than it did when change occurred at the top.
The Nationals, meanwhile, are still firmly in the middle stages of their rebuild. By the end of this year, they should have a better sense of which of their stockpiled prospects can be counted on in the long term. Left-hander Patrick Corbin, who hasn’t been the same since the World Series title run in 2019, will be a free agent, which means his massive salary will come off the books. A year or two from now, this roster probably will be even cheaper, with more established young talent and a clearer sense of direction. From that perspective, the Nationals will be more appealing to a potential buyer in a few years than they are now.
Money for ballpark rejuvenation is still in flux
In September, the Nationals sent a letter to local leaders asking the city to repurpose parts of an existing fund, created to pay off the municipal bonds floated to fund the construction of Nationals Park, into a fund that would help pay for improvements to the city-owned ballpark. In January, legislation to do just that was introduced to the D.C. Council.
Nationals Park is 16 years old and in need of sprucing up. If the city approves funding for that work, or even if that work is completed, it will take the burden off ownership to fund such changes entirely out of pocket. And the franchise will be more appealing with those changes completed, or the money promised, than it was during the previous few years of uncertainty.
The value of the Orioles
In conversations with multiple people familiar with the Lerners — all of whom requested anonymity to speculate about the timing of the announcement — the potential impact of the pending sale of the Orioles was mentioned repeatedly.
One interpretation of its impact is as follows: The Lerners have long sought something close to the $2.4 billion that Steve Cohen paid for the New York Mets. When Ted Leonsis, owner of three other Washington-based pro sports franchises, offered more than $2 billion for the Nationals, the Lerner family did not take it.
Earlier this winter, the Angelos family reached a deal to sell a share of the Orioles to a group led by David Rubenstein, a Baltimore native and one of the founders of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group. That deal put the value of the franchise at $1.7 billion.
Compared with the Nationals, the Orioles have a better on-field product, a better television rights situation and millions promised for renovations to a treasured ballpark in Baltimore. All of that might have suggested to the Lerners that their desired price was out of reach. They wouldn’t be the only owners to find the market less hospitable than expected: The Angels’ Arte Moreno put his team up for sale in 2022, only to pull it off the market a few months later.
“Would I have liked [the Orioles valuation] to be higher because I like high franchise values? Of course I would,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said at the owners meetings this month. “But I think it’s good. I think given the various issues related to that club and the media situation, generally, I think it’s a good number.”
The timing of the Orioles sale
Even as the Nationals made their intentions to explore a sale public, rumors that the Angelos family was planning to sell the Orioles swirled in private. It was a poorly kept secret and one of the Nationals’ bigger stumbling blocks: If the Orioles were going to be for sale soon, why would anyone jump at the Nationals before evaluating their options? Indeed, Rubenstein was once putting together a group to bid on the Nationals before pivoting to orchestrate his deal with the Angelos family behind closed doors.
Should the Lerners again decide to explore a sale in a few years, they will do so without the specter of the Orioles looming to entice interested bidders. And, more importantly, they might do so with a greater understanding of where that “media situation” Manfred mentioned will stand.
The MASN situation could finally, actually end
The main reason the sale of the Orioles looms so large for the Nationals is that it wrests control of their television rights out of the hands of Peter Angelos, who was never willing to negotiate a more comfortable arrangement and litigated every dollar the Orioles owed the Nationals for television rights. It puts those rights in the hands of Rubenstein, a known entity to the Nationals and someone who, simply by virtue of not being part of the Angelos family, seems more likely to make a deal. Even Manfred, notoriously tight-lipped on the MASN situation over the years, expressed optimism.
Whatever happens with MASN, baseball’s television revenue situation is more precarious than it has been at any point in the past 30 years. Cord-cutting has led long-standing cable deals to fall apart and has thrown into question how and whether teams outside the biggest markets will ever make what they once did from television revenue.
But Manfred has said he hopes to have a streaming service available by 2025 that would provide participating teams with cost certainty, and MLB officials believe the broadcast rights situation will settle into something more predictable in the coming years. Many teams, including the Nationals, will be more valuable when that happens. If broadcast revenue stabilizes — and the Nationals and Orioles find a way to extricate themselves from their complicated entanglement soon — the Nationals will be a more appealing asset.
