Orioles extend lease at Camden Yards

February 9th, 2021

The Orioles will remain at their iconic home for at least two more years. The club has reached an agreement with the Maryland Stadium Authority to extend its lease and stay at Oriole Park at Camden Yards through 2023, per multiple reports. The Baltimore Sun reports that the agreement could serve as a placeholder until the two sides negotiate a deal to keep the Orioles at Camden Yards for the long term.

The Orioles’ lease was set to expire at the end of 2021, though the club had the option to extend that lease for an additional five years. The new agreement keeps the O’s at the ballpark through Dec. 31, 2023, per the Sun, with the team holding the right to exercise a one-time, five-year extension by Feb. 1, 2023.

“The Baltimore Orioles have stated publicly that they remain committed to Baltimore and to Maryland,” Thomas Kelso, chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority, told the Sun. “The MSA and the Orioles are currently discussing terms of a new lease and capital reinvestment that would keep the team playing in an upgraded Oriole Park at Camden Yards that would offer increased economic benefits from both baseball and year-round, non-baseball uses.”

Speculation arose in 2019 that the Orioles could be either put up for sale or relocated, but the club’s ownership quickly and emphatically shot those rumors down. Monday’s news further solidifies the O’s standing in Baltimore, at least for the immediate future.

“The Orioles are a Baltimore institution,” team executive vice president John Angelos told the Sun in 2019, adding that the club would stay “as long as Fort McHenry is standing watch over the Inner Harbor.

“The Orioles will be in Baltimore, be in Maryland,” Angelos continued. “That’s the beginning and the end as far as I’m concerned.”