LOVERRO: Lack of naming rights at Nationals Park another symptom of team ownership

OPINION:

Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers fans will flock to Nationals Park on Friday for the home opener.

Not to Capital One Park. Or Audi Park. Or even Northwest Park.

Nationals Park — the same as it has been since it opened in 2008.

It’s hardly an iconic name. Certainly not Wrigley Field, Fenway Park or Camden Yards. No one is writing songs or books about Nationals Park.

I think if it were even named Ozzie’s Car Wash Park or Bob’s Pest Control Park, fans would hardly miss Nationals Park, if meantean more money to spend on players.

Yet the owners of the team, the Lerners, have passed up millions of dollars in revenue over 19 seasons, which has been particularly egregious over the last six penny-pinching payroll seasons.

I mean, they are talking about selling naming rights on sports facilities for Fairfax County schools.

There are many examples of the miserly way the Lerners have conducted the baseball business, so their failure to cash​ in on a naming rights deal defies logic. It is, though, an example of the family’s dysfunctional baseball business practices.

In March 2025, Forbes reported that the Lerners hired Excel Sports Management to negotiate deals for jersey patches and stadium naming rights. Three months later​, they announced a jersey patch sponsorship agreement with AARP. The amount was not disclosed, but in 2024, The Athletic reported the average team jersey patch deal was worth between $7 million and $8 million annually. But no ballpark naming rights deal yet.

What’s been the holdup? Maybe the Lerners​’ delusional value of their product.

According to sources, the Lerners have held out for a price higher than the richest rights agreement in baseball — the $20 million annual deal ​of the New York Mets with Citigroup — still the highest yearly payout despite the 20-year agreement made in 2007.

New York — the biggest market in the country with 7.49 million people. Washington? Eighth​-largest at 2.63 million. The Mets drew 3.2 million fans, compared to the Nationals’ 1.9 million fans.

In 2021, the Lerners were ready to sign a naming rights agreement, according to sources. The deal was ready to be finalized with an unnamed New York financial fund for $18 million annually for an undetermined number of years, sources said. But the company walked away from the negotiations out of frustration with the Lerners when the family upped the price to — guess what? — $20 million a year.

Delusional, to the point of being destructive. But illustrative of the woeful way the Lerners have run this franchise — with no reason to believe it will get better.

The family hired a new president of business operations in January — Jason Sinnarajah, who was the senior vice president and chief operating officer with the Kansas City Royals. Washington terribly bungled its first business challenge under his watch — the new television deal.

The Nationals are no longer under the control of MASN. But in order to get out from under the control of the Baltimore Orioles​’ network, they had to go along with baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred’s plan to consolidate team television rights. The team’s streaming rights are now under MLB control, but a deal for traditional viewing on cable outlets wasn’t announced until Opening Day, leaving many fans confused and unable to watch, with cable providers offering little help.

The team appeared to spend little, if anything, on outreach to prepare their fans. This was what you got from their new president of business operations in an open letter after the fact:

“While we celebrated Blake Butera’s first win as a Major League manager, we understand that for some fans, the experience of watching the game on television was challenging. We want to take a few minutes to address that situation and make sure we’re doing right by you.

“While we did our best in the past months to advise fans on preparing for changes taking place for this season’s broadcasts, specific channel locations and distributor information were not available until the morning of our first game. We know that’s not ideal for planning purposes, so we wanted to make sure that we get you all the right information to be able to watch the Washington Nationals.”

Business as usual, and don’t expect it to change — the Lerner family has done business their way for decades — until they sell the team.

It was on the market in 2022 but, like a naming-rights deal or a box of paper clips, the Lerners couldn’t get the price they wanted and put the “for sale” sign away. Once a new baseball labor agreement is reached, it’s likely the franchise will be back on the market — stripped-down payroll and all.

That will likely be another delusional exercise. Maybe by then they’ll be playing in Ralph’s Rage Room Park.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.