A New York State Supreme Court justice ruled Tuesday that the Orioles can seek arbitration outside Major League Baseball's system in part of their long-running legal dispute with the Washington Nationals over television rights.
At issue was a claim from the Nationals trying to compel a profit dividend payment from the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) for 2018, which the network withheld from both the Orioles and Nationals amid unmet projections and the looming financial uncertainty surrounding eight years of rights fee payments.
The Nationals filed a motion that sought to have the arbitration for this dispute over the request for dividends occur before MLB, and filed an emergency petition to block it from beginning before the American Arbitration Association (AAA), an independent arbiter.