In an active dealmaking week for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), the exclusive regional-sports-network home of MLB's Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals, the channel will now be carried by Fubo in the virtual MVPD's base $80-a-month "Pro" tier.

Starting on March 28, Major League Baseball's Opening Day, MASN will be carried by Fubo across a seven-state footprint, from "Harrisburg, Pa., to Charlotte, N.C." Here's Fubo's official press release. 

The announcement of the Fubo deal comes the day after MASN announced that it had renewed distribution terms with Comcast, but with the cable operator no longer carrying the RSN in its cheapest Xfinity TV tier. 

In order to access MASN, Comcast pay TV subscribers will now have to subscribe to Xfinity Ultimate, which is about $20 more expensive. 

In addition to ESPN and FS1, as well as baseball-specific channels  MLB.TV, MLB Network, MLB Strike Zone, Fubo carries 35 RSNs across various parts of its national footprint. 

This unique access to local sports networks comes as Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery pool their national sports channels for a streaming bundle. Fubo is suing these companies, claiming that joint venture is anticompetitive. 

“Fubo is proud to be the home for local sports and the addition of MASN will bring Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals fans even more access to their favorite teams for the 2024 MLB season,” said Todd Mathers, senior VP, content strategy and acquisition, Fubo, in a statement. “We look forward to expanding baseball coverage across the mid-Atlantic region with Fubo’s leading MLB offering.”

Comcast has negotiated another renewal of a regional sports network that relegates the channel to pricier program tiers. 

Xfinity TV subscribers in Baltimore and D.C. will no longer be able to access Mid-Atlantic Sports Network channels MASN and MASN 2 in the cable operator's basic plan, and will instead have to pay $20 a month more for the Ultimate TV package to see Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals games. 

With consumers not hooked on local sports teams rejecting the spiraling costs of pay TV and cord-cutting their way out of the ecosystem in increasingly large droves, this isn't the first time that the now No. 2 ranked pay TV operator has tried to make sports fans pay the freight for regional sports networks

In January, Comcast also kicked SportsNet Pittsburgh out of basic, making fans of MLB’s Pittsburgh Pirates and the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins pay more to see their teams play on television. 

And back in October, Comcast also relegated Seattle Mariners channel Root Sports Northwest to Xfinity Ultimate.

Also read: MASN Mess Meanders on: New York Appellate Court Is the Latest to Try to Sort Out the Decade-Old RSN Fee Dispute Between Baseball's Orioles and Nationals

Comcast will ease MASN's existing Xfinity base-tier users into the transition. They won't have to pay an additional premium to upgrade to Ultimate TV for the first three months, and they'll only take a $10-a-month hit the following three months. But starting in the seventh month, they'll be on the hook for the full $20-a-month upgrade. 

The change goes into effect on Tuesday. 

“We’re pleased to have reached an agreement with MASN to continue carrying its networks and making them available on our Ultimate TV level of service before MLB’s Opening Day,” Comcast said in a statement. “We appreciate MASN working with us to find a solution to maintain MASN and MASN2 on our platform that also provides our customers with a choice.”

Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles are 57-48 in the regular-season and playoffs against the Washington Nationals all-time.

But after more than a decade spent in courtrooms and arbitration hearings trying to figure out how to split TV rights fees from the regional sports network they share, the two franchises are still deadlocked in an extra-innings duel. 

On Tuesday, the New York Court of Appeals heard oral arguments from both sides, becoming the latest court or arbitrative body to try to determine how much in the way of TV rights money the Nationals should receive from Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) for the period of 2012-2016. 

Also read: MASN To Broadcast Orioles, Washington Nationals; Add HD

The conflict’s chasm remains wide. MASN, which is majority owned by the Orioles, already paid the Nationals what the Orioles proposed for that five-year period: $197.5 million. But the Nationals have argued they should be paid $475 million.

In 2012, an arbitration panel of executives from the Pittsburgh Pirates, Tampa Bay Rays and New York Mets heard the case. And in 2014, it ruled that the Nationals’ five-year total for 2012-2016 should come out to $298.1 million, or $60 million a season. 

The Orioles argued that paying the Nationals nearly $60 million a season would wipe out profitability for MASN, for which the Baltimore franchise is the primary beneficiary. 

All subsequent attempts to hammer out an agreement led to Tuesday's hearing nine years later. The Athletic has an in-depth summary of all that arbitration and litigation that's gone into this. 

And even if the New York court’s six-judge panel is able to come up with a number agreeable to both sides, the drama won't be over. There are still rights fees for the five-year periods of 2017-2021 and 2022-2026 to figure out. 

Curse of the Expos

The MASN mess started all the way back in 2005, when the financially failing Montreal Expos relocated to Washington, crowding into a Mid-Atlantic TV market that had been exclusively controlled by the Orioles since 1972.

To compensate the Orioles, Major League Baseball gave them majority ownership of MASN, the regional sports network that would show games for both Orioles and the Nationals. 

TV rights fees would be split between the two franchises. Initially, the Orioles would own 90% of the RSN, with the Nationals gradually growing their share every year, with 2032 designated to be the year that its ownership tops out at 33%. 

Since the Orioles had a greater interest in MASN’s profit, the franchise doesn’t benefit from high team rights fees as much as the Nationals, even though its TV rights fee would be equal under the way the deal is structured. In other words, the Orioles actually make more money when their RSN pays less in total rights fees. 

In any event, the 2012-2016 portion of the dispute could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, if the New York appellant court can’t hash it out. ■

Dish Network said its satellite and Sling TV subscribers can no longer receive MASN and the NBC Regional Sports Networks because they were unable to renew their distribution agreements.

The announcement came on opening day of the Major League Baseball season.

Also Read: Changes at Sinclair's RSNs Just Start with Name Change

The dispute affects views in 10 states and the District of Columbia. 

MASN--Mid-Atlantic Sports Network--is owned by the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals. NBC Sports Washington, NBC Sports Bay Area and NBC Sports California are the NBC RSNs impacted.

Also Read: Dish Dropping NBC RSNs as it Bets on Sports Wagering

Dish previously dropped NBC RSNs in Philadelphia, Boston and the Pacific Northwest in 2019 

Dish Network has been deciding not to renew regional sports networks, including those owned by Sinclair, which were rebranded as Bally’s Sports.

“The current RSN model is fundamentally broken,” said Brian Neylon, group president, Dish TV. “This model requires nearly all customers to pay for RSNs when only a small percentage of customers actually watch them. As the cost of these channels continues to escalate, we no longer think it makes sense to include them in our TV lineup.”

Dish said it is proposing an a la carte approach to the RSN, letting subscriber choose whether or not they want to pay to watch local sports.

“With this updated RSN model, no customer would be forced to pay for content they don’t watch, and the RSNs would determine the price customers would pay for their channels,” Neylon said.

A spokesperson for the NBC Regional Sports Network noted that distributors that continue to carry the RSNs are listed on their websites.

"The NBC Regional Sports Networks offered to continue distribution on fair market terms. DISH and Sling declined those terms and have dropped the networks," the spokesperson said.

Dish Network added Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, home of the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles major league baseball teams, to the list of regional sports networks that potentially could go dark to its customers on April 1.

Dish already has warned customers that three NBC Sports RSNs -- NBC Sports Washington, NBC Sports Bay Area and NBC Sports California -- could go dark on April 1. Dish had already dropped the remaining NBC Sports RSNs -- NBC Sports Chicago and networks in Philadelphia, Boston, and the Pacific Northwest -- in 2019.

News that MASN had been added to the list of potential drops was first reported by TV Answerman.com.

On its Dish Promise website, the satellite TV provider said that it has proposed to all RSNs that they be sold a la carte to Dish customers, a proposal that every pay TV operator would like, but none have.

Also Read: RSNs Scramble for Streaming Deals as Opening Day Approaches 

“Dish has made this consumer-friendly proposal to NBC and MASN, but they have been unwilling to accept, choosing instead to continue with the old, broken model,” Dish said on the Dish Promise site. “We continue to remain open that the Regional Sports Networks will work with us to offer their content in a way that provides choice and value to all customers.”

RSNs usually require carriage on the most popular video tier of distributors, enabling them to capture the most advertising dollars. But high fees of RSNs and claims by distributors that the majority of their customers don’t watch them, have put the two at loggerheads for years. 

The news of the potential Dish blackout comes weeks after MASN said it had reached a multi-year carriage deal with Comcast. In announcing that deal, MASN said it had agreements with 24 cable, satellite, telco and digital distributors in 17 Nielsen markets in its seven-state exclusive home television territory, spanning Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Layer3 TV, the Denver-based next-gen cable operator, said it has added Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) and MASN2 to its core allHD Platinum package in the Washington, D.C. metro area, including parts of Maryland and Virginia.

The additions will give subs access to the regional sports network’s live coverage of Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals games, as well as pregame and postgame shows for those teams. MASN also televises more than 150 NCAA Division I basketball games and more than 40 NCAA Division I football games, featuring games from major conferences such as the Big East and Big South.

Layer3 TV is also offered in Chicago and in Longmont, Colo. (via a partnership with a municipal provider called NextLight).

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It officially launched service this week in Los Angeles, including Malibu and Pasadena and Newport Beach, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

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Layer3 TV has not announced subscriber numbers, but CEO Jeff Binder told the publication that it’s adding thousands of customers per month and that those customers are tending to stay with the no-contract IP-delivered video service.