Mark Lerner has said, more than once, that his family isn’t selling the Washington Nationals — the position they landed on after a sale search that dragged on from 2022 without a buyer. Treat that as an update, not a resolution. The dispute that stalled the earlier sale attempt was a fight with the Orioles over the Nationals’ media rights through MASN; a settlement reached in 2025 hands the Nationals full control of those rights starting this season, removing the exact obstacle that made the team difficult to sell.
None of that has much to do with whether the Nationals field a competitive team, or whether the city that helped finance Nationals Park’s construction has any say in who owns the franchise playing in it. A baseball team, under this ownership structure, is a financial asset first — one whose sale price just improved because a legal dispute over broadcast revenue got resolved. Whether the Lerners keep it is a business decision made on business terms. The fans and the city aren’t parties to that decision. They’re the value the asset is priced on.