SARASOTA, Fla. — The reality the Orioles find themselves in is one that, up until about a year ago, didn’t just seem out of reach. It was impossible.

No longer is Baltimore embroiled in a legal fight with its neighboring Washington Nationals, agreeing Monday to settle their long-standing dispute over the distribution of television rights fees from the shared Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. The Nationals will be free to find their own broadcast partner after this upcoming season, putting an end to a costly, drama-filled saga that was a headache for MLB, the two teams and their fan bases.

It’s clear now that everything changed when David Rubenstein purchased the team from the Angelos family. The late Peter Angelos negotiated the original details of the MASN deal with former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig; Angelos’ son John, who was the Orioles’ control person from 2020 to 2024, oversaw the network in addition to being the team’s chairman and CEO. Both of them clung tightly to the Nationals’ rights and fought hard in court over the “fair market value” for the associated fees.

Rubenstein, in an about-face, made solving the MASN debacle an immediate priority. He hired Catie Griggs from the Mariners in July to be president of business operations, and the club named longtime executive Greg Bader the network’s executive vice president and general manager in October. Though Rubenstein claimed he wasn’t a “miracle worker” when it came to settling the MASN dispute, he was able to bridge the impasse with the Nationals’ Lerner family within a year.

But now comes the hard part.

As big of a hurdle as it was to rid themselves of their feud with Washington, the state of regional sports networks across North America is a mess. Cord-cutting has taken a massive bite out of television audiences, depressing the value of regional sports networks and forcing teams and their broadcast partners to explore direct-to-consumer services that allow fans to stream games rather than tuning into the cable channel. MASN has been no exception — the network’s website has stated all offseason that it is “working on” a direct-to-consumer product.

“Given the rapid escalation of cord-cutting and the challenges of RSNs today, including the reality of who and where MASN is in the grand scheme of things, this understanding makes sense,” former Orioles attorney Alan Rifkin said. “The ultimate question is whether Orioles’ games are made available on all platforms, including streaming, when, and if, MLB aggregates those rights. I believe they will. In the end, that makes sense on many levels. MLB totally understands the opportunities and the challenges. My bet is with them.”

The Orioles declined to comment for this article.

Forbes reported shortly after Rubenstein purchased his majority stake in the Orioles that MASN received a $0 valuation in the official terms of the deal distributed to the rest of the league, a far cry from previous valuations such as the $580 million figure for the Chicago Cubs’ TV rights in their 2009 sale. Much of that is a testament to how expensive MASN had become for the Orioles between legal fees and court-ordered back pay, but also a reflection of how the regional sports networks landscape has changed over the past few decades.

MASN has already cut costs in recent years by broadcasting fewer spring training games, having broadcasters call those games remotely and trimming pre- and postgame coverage. Comcast negotiated a new deal with the Orioles last spring to place MASN and MASN2 in Xfinity’s more expensive tier of channels, a move the cable distributor had previously made in other markets to offset the declining revenue in broadcasting regional sports networks.

The path forward might be to follow those whose deals with Diamond Sports Group were terminated after the company declared bankruptcy in March 2023. Clubs such as the Arizona Diamondbacks and Cleveland Guardians have partnered with MLB to offer stand-alone in-market streaming packages for game broadcasts. Out-of-market customers still need to purchase MLB.TV to watch the games but local viewers no longer have to worry about blackouts outside of nationally televised games.

Teams that rode out the Diamond Sports crisis will now have their games broadcast on FanDuel Sports Network, which will be available on local cable networks and as an add-on to Amazon Prime Video subscriptions in select areas within their regions.

The Orioles could form their own exclusive partnership with a streaming service such as Prime Video or YouTube TV. DirecTV Stream already offers MASN and MASN2 as part of a larger deal with the satellite television company and FuboTV offers a package with the network as well. The current MASN app allows customers to sign in with their cable providers to watch.

However, Baltimore might very well just continue forward on its own, leaning on a vertical business model that allows the team to control every aspect of the broadcast while relying on a strong vision from the top to see it through. The Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays are, pending the finalization of the Orioles’ settlement, the only other three MLB teams to hold 100% ownership of their own TV networks.

Whether the Orioles find an external partner with existing direct-to-consumer infrastructure or continue to operate independently, they have reached a crucial juncture at which they must decide how to navigate the ever-changing regional sports network industry to restore a healthy revenue stream and provide a product that meets fans where they want to consume their games.

It might not require a miracle, but the work isn’t over yet.

Baltimore Sun reporter Jeff Barker contributed to this article.

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