At John Angelos’ request, Maryland officials considered filing antitrust suit against MLB to aid Orioles during MASN dispute

At the request of current Orioles chairman John Angelos, Maryland officials seriously considered an extraordinary idea: that the state sue Major League Baseball on behalf of the team, alleging the league was misusing its antitrust exemption in a dispute over fees from the Os’ broadcast network.

The prospect of such a lawsuit — which would have fractured the club’s already-tense relationship with the league — went far enough in 2019 that Attorney General Brian Frosh attended two meetings with a representative of Gov. Larry Hogan, Maryland Stadium Authority chairman Tom Kelso, Angelos and others to consider it, according to participants.

The meetings were confirmed to The Baltimore Sun by Kelso, a Hogan appointee who chaired the stadium authority from 2015 until March. Frosh, a Democrat who left office in January, declined to discuss the sessions, saying they were confidential. Two other people with direct knowledge also confirmed the meetings to The Sun. They requested anonymity, saying the talks were private.

Ultimately, no suit was filed. But the discussions underscore Angelos’ propensity for making big “asks” of his landlord: the state of Maryland. The club plays in a stadium the state built, owns and has pledged to upgrade. The earnest, how-can-we-help response to the proposal also shows the length the state, which lost the NFL’s Colts to Indianapolis in 1984, is willing to go to protect its multimillion-dollar investment in — and relationship with — the Orioles.

The club and the state are currently negotiating a new lease — the current one expires Dec. 31 — and Angelos has sought commercial development rights to three state-owned parking lots on valuable land between Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium, according to four people familiar with the request. One of the sources said Angelos’ idea for the parking lots came up early in the talks with the administration of new Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, but is no longer on the table.

The lawsuit proposal came during 2019, a year the Orioles lost 108 of their 162 games and finished 49 games out of first place in their American League East division. Peter Angelos, the club owner and John’s father, was in declining health. The Orioles had been in a legal dispute with the Washington Nationals for five years over what they owed the Nationals for showing their games on the Orioles-controlled Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. An MLB arbitration panel had ruled in 2019 against Baltimore, finding the Orioles should pay the Nationals about $100 million more in broadcast rights fees.

“We were concerned that the Angelos family was going through a very difficult time, with Peter having to step away and John taking over, the team playing poorly, and struggling with this litigation over MASN,” said Kelso, who took Angelos’ proposal for a meeting to Hogan. “We wanted the team — and the Angelos family — to know they were important and, to the extent legally possible, we wanted to try to help them.”

Angelos and Major League Baseball decline to comment Monday.

Todd Webster, a lobbyist for the Orioles on Capitol Hill, responded on behalf of the team. He said that Maryland has long been willing to take up for the club. He noted that in 2004, then-Gov. Bob Ehrlich raised concerns with MLB about protecting the Orioles’ value in light of the impending move of the Expos to Washington. In a letter to then-Commissioner Bud Selig, Ehrlich wrote, “The relocation of the Montreal Expos will have a significant, detrimental, indeed irreparable, impact on the state of Maryland.”

The idea behind the state suing in 2019, Kelso said, was to determine if there was a valid claim under Maryland’s antitrust law and, if so, to pursue it to a victory or at least a good settlement for the Orioles.

But he said no legal action was taken by the state after Angelos contacted Kelso following a second meeting with the attorney general — several months after the first — and said, according to Kelso: “‘I’ve developed a good relationship with Rob Manfred, and I think we’ve got an opportunity to settle this.’” Manfred has been the league’s commissioner since 2015.

That didn’t happen, either. The case ended up in New York’s highest court, and the Orioles lost an appeal in April. MASN was held liable in June for $99.2 million in broadcast fees to the Nationals.

It does appear that the Orioles’ relationship with MLB has improved since 2019. In 2020, Major League Baseball team owners voted to approve John Angelos as “control person” for the Orioles, meaning he is responsible for the team, and represents the club at owners’ meetings. The approval signaled an official transition from the leadership of his father, now 94.

Essentially a monopoly, Major League Baseball has had an exemption since 1922 that allows it to operate without following federal antitrust laws. That means it can pool resources among its 30 teams and engage in other behavior that might not be permitted by interstate companies.

Under an agreement that dates to when the Nationals moved in 2005 to the Washington-Baltimore region, depriving Baltimore of a third of its market for fans, the Orioles got a bigger ownership stake in than the Nationals in MASN.

Major League Baseball encourages its clubs to settle disputes under the league’s own procedures rather than filing suits. But the Orioles — defying Selig — initiated their legal challenge in 2014, seeking to overturn an earlier MLB arbitration panel’s decision against Baltimore regarding MASN.

Although the state didn’t sue over antitrust claims in 2019, Hogan had written the previous year to Manfred to say the MASN case “is of great concern to me for its potential negative impact on the Orioles, the city of Baltimore, and the state of Maryland.” He asked Manfred in the letter, obtained by The Sun, to “immediately facilitate discussions to bring this matter to a resolution that is beneficial to all parties.”

In a response to the then-governor, Manfred said he also wanted a “quick resolution of the ongoing dispute.”

The state has helped the Orioles in other significant ways.

Hogan, a Republican who left office in January, signed legislation in 2022 under which the stadium authority can borrow up to $1.2 billion to pay for stadium improvements — $600 million each for the Orioles and Ravens. The law specifies that a lease must be long enough to pay off the longest-term bonds.

The stadium funding bill, which received overwhelming support in the General Assembly, came as some economists question the wisdom of subsidizing professional sports teams’ operations.

“My perspective is that subsidies have never been shown to produce the benefits their proponents claim on the basis of self-serving impact studies,” said Dennis Coates, an economics professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Although John Angelos insists the Orioles will never leave Baltimore, the state seems determined to provide the team a comfort zone. The Colts left partly because the city and state wouldn’t commit to replacing the aging Memorial Stadium.

The Angelos family and Major League Baseball have a stormy history.

During a 1994 work stoppage by players, Peter Angelos refused to accede to Major League Baseball’s plans to use replacements on the field, based in part on his previous representation of union workers as an attorney. A decade later, Peter Angelos opposed the relocation of the Expos to Washington.

Baltimore Sun reporter Sam Janesch contributed to this article.

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