Monumental Sports & Entertainment Chairman & CEO Ted Leonsis Talks Rebuilding DC

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That's the most remarkable thing. It was a handshake. It was a handshake deal. And Washington, DC came here from Lowell, Massachusetts on a Greyhound bus. In the mid-70s, fell in love with the city. Went to Georgetown University. And then we stood up BOL and built really the commercialization of the internet, not too far away in Virginia. And I've always looked at this community, the DMV, if you will, being the district, Maryland, and Virginia. It's the most important market. It's 10 million people. It's the third or fourth largest DMA in the country. And so, you know, DC, we need a strong DC. We need a strong downtown. And we own the building. We own the teams. We own the network. The studio is here. And so, you've made a big commitment and we'll work with the mayor and help to reimagine what should the next version of downtown rebirth look like? Yeah. I want to ask you about what that looks like. But did Governor Glenn Youngkin get a little over his skis when he shook your hand on that deal? What happened? I think the governor is a really great executive. And he dealt with what basically everyone is dealing with. A real bifurcated view of what is best for people. And when I said, "Police took over." This was a great, great business deal. And we were told that your businesses and wanted here. And so, now was done not through where we were being located in Alexandria, but by the political machine enrichment. And so, you know, you get to the point where you say, "There's no place like home." And we work the deal with the mayor and the city council. And, you know, we're a part of that team. And the country needs a functioning, strong, safe, clean, growth mindset, Washington, DC. We're a fellow weather, if you will, for the entire country. And we fell behind a bit, pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, post-pandemic. And I'm really glad that there's been this reckoning, if you will. And it's happening in all major metro areas. And now we can move forward in coordination with business and the philanthropy community. We have a unique set of issues here because of the federal government overlay. Yes, right. And, you know, just every day we have to deal with things that connect Virginia and Maryland and DC like the metro. Like the traffic that needs to be mitigated. Like the infrastructure dollars that are being spent on roads and road closures. And so all of that, I think, we can play a big social responsibility role in helping to make things better. Well, you're going to play a pivotal role in the future of the city and the downtown area. I heard you mentioned the other day. You might be interested in speaking of talking like a politician, an honorary title, "Vice Mayor of the DDC, Downtown DC." Because that's kind of what you are. You join city officials on a trip to Las Vegas to a retail conference a couple of weeks ago to bring business here. You're representing the city and what is truly a balance of politics and business, isn't it? Yes, you may not know this, but I was once mayor, elected mayor of my town in Florida. I served for six years as mayor. Every time I see Mayor Bloomberg, we joke and call each other honorable. So you should pay a little more respect to me there. Mr. Mayor, I appreciate that. Yes, I understand the role that we can play in attracting businesses. And frankly, I said I was surprised at you always heard how well-managed the state of Virginia is. It has low taxes. It's a great state. But I found it easier to negotiate and work with the city of DC than I did with the state of Virginia. And so, yeah, I'm going to go on and be an evangelist for the city, for the mayor, for the city council. I want a higher quality of life for our employees. We bring two and a half million people into the city every year for our concerts, for NCAA tournaments, for the capitals, for the wizards, for the mystics. We have back-to-back mystics games. You sure, too. WNBA tonight and tomorrow night. There'll be 30,000 people or so in those two nights coming into DC. And most of them come in from Maryland and Virginia and they'll spend money in DC, pay tax dollars here. Well, people are talking about the Caitlin Clark effect in the local media today. You're right. You've got four games now for the WNBA. This season, I believe, tonight, tomorrow are going to be huge at the capital one, arena. You've also said that you want DC to be the world capital of women's sports. You've described this as a growth stock. How do you make that happen? Well, I think what will look to do is we're second-long as tenured owners of a WNBA team. And mystics are a growing business. I'm chairman of the Media Committee at the NBA. I know what's going to happen with the WNBA media rights. It'll be a very nice increase there. We own our network. I know what the ratings are locally for women's sports. And so what I'd like to do is make a monumental W. We own multiple teams and venues and a network. Let's use the mystics as kind of the foundation. And I would love one day to have a woman's hockey team here. I would love one day to have women's volleyball professional. We should make DC the professional women's sports capital. We have a very broad base of ownership executives. Sheila Johnson, Lumin Powell Jobs, Michelle Freeman. We have the gravitas for DC through our WNBA, Bonapetis and through our ownership group. Yeah, we'll make those investments. And I think you'll see DC emerging as that capital. Well, TV is a big deal with an important story right now about NBA rights. You can speak directly to this. Or maybe I should say TV is not as big a deal as it used to be. Because we're looking at a proposal now. It's Amazon NBC ESPN. A big chunk of these games will be streamed exclusively. And I wonder if the owners are going to sign off on this and what you see as the future here. You know, nothing's been announced yet. There's been lots of reports on it. What I'll say is that the convening power of sports, both bricks and mortar, bringing people into an arena. And then being able to watch the game on multiple devices, your television, your iPad, your iPhone, on a global basis, we've proven how valuable our IP is, our content is. And my expectation is that this deal will be very, very strong for the players, for the owners, for the league itself. And it allows us to continue to invest because the game has never been better. Both hockey and basketball, the playoffs, the competition, women's basketball, the entertainment value, the competitiveness is off the chart. And so we now have to take more control and be digital first companies. That's essentially what the movement is. Terrestrial is going to play a huge part of it. I look at Bloomberg, I've spent a couple hours here today. You were a four runner in it. You built a platform. It was digitally based. You bought print properties. You have television properties. You stream, you have private networks. Well, that's what we should be. You need to be everywhere. It's what you're saying. But what's the end game? Is it direct to consumer? A company like Mindy Mental subscribes to me. Say 10 years from now. I'm at home watching a wizard's game on my headset, gambling at the same time. Is that the future? We want to have deep engagement relationships with consumers. However, they want. And I do believe that subscriptions, I look at it more like a software company. We have a software services business model where we get a subscriber, our season ticket holders, as an example. They were new in a bad year, 80, 85%. In good years, 99%. Someone asked to die, if you will, and for the family to lose their season tickets. And many cases we hear, no, no, no. My dad left it to me. I'm stepping into his shoes. And so subscriptions business is great. And if you build a big audience, that people value by paying. That's the difference, then, like a website. People are paying to come to the games. And people are paying to watch these performers. Then we license our content to terrestrial, to cable companies. And then more and more, we're saying, well, if you don't have cable, if you don't subscribe to a service, we need to get it to you directly. Well, that's just like a subscription. Sure. And so we've made a big investment in monumental. We own our network, the monumental sports network. It's available on cable, on satellite. We've done deals with Amazon. In prime, we're doing deals where we get subscribers directly. And I think we want to control our IP and be able to distribute it foreign-wide. It sounds endless if you do it right when it comes to selling. Well, I think partnerships lead to prosperity. Yeah. And these are some of the greatest companies, media companies, and tech companies. And that's been the new phenomenon now that the Microsofts and the Alphabet, Google's, the Amazon's, the Apple's, they are placing a lot of value in the IP itself. As are the TV people. Right, although-- I don't think the Comcast NBC views itself as a TV company anymore, right? It's a tech company with a big distribution platform. Yes. You couldn't have imagined this when you were watching Celtics Games with Rabbid Years at Lowell High School. No, I-- This is another universe that we're in now. I couldn't-- You couldn't have imagined having a second chance to revitalize the nation's capital. We hear a lot about crime, the balance between safety, innovation, and openness. How do you make it safe enough for someone to want to invest, but free enough for people to have a good time? Well, the city has to continue to find ways to make fair and equitable laws that service businesses and the populace and the voters, obviously. So business and politics meet again. Very much so. And I think that was the big breakthrough over the last six months that people understand that if the federal office buildings aren't open, and people aren't taking metro, we're driving and parking and coming into the city, and having lunch in the city, and buying apartments, renting apartments in the city, that's a bad thing for the local economy. And if we warrant here, those 2 1/2 million people who come in, they'll come in arrive at 5 o'clock today. Go drink. They'll go eat at the local restaurants. They'll take metro. Metro ridership needs to be increased so that it can do longer hours and make more investments in technology and safety and security. So I think what's happened is there's been awakening that everything is connected, that Metro, that the police, that the traffic mitigation, that the infrastructure investments and roads, all of that comes together to make a higher quality of life. We have to integrate it and not take anything for granted that this is a very competitive world. Marilyn Virginia won a steel DCs companies. DC wants to bring those companies back into downtown. And so you get judged by what kind of results that you get. And I think DC now is on a rebirth. We're seeing crime go down. We're seeing Metro coming up. We're seeing tourism having record numbers and tourism. We have to find ways to get the tourist to downtown, to eat and die. Because right now there seems to be almost like a fence that keeps them on the other side. A constitution avenue barrier. Exactly. That's a real thing. When are you going to buy the gnats? I would very much like to buy the gnats and we're very respectful to the process and the family. I think it makes a lot of sense in this super city vernacular to have one platform year round teams and to have the size and scale so that we can compete in terms of payroll and terms of talent and terms of infrastructure with Los Angeles, with New York, that just have bigger markets. And so we're seeing in media, we're seeing in most industries that scale really matters. And you have to have a growth mindset. And so for us, because we own the winter sports, if you will. And we own the network. And we own the venues adding that team, I think is really, really important to the business. But I want to win championships. And the way that you win championships is by having great farm teams and great infrastructure and great coaches takes money. And then they have the patience to rebuild the teams. And the nationals are well on their way to rebuilding a great team. Is it right on a regional TV deal? Right now, I think it's a whole new game in local TV. I don't know what will happen in baseball. I know that we've controlled our destiny locally by buying our regional sports network. It's now-- it's no longer NBC. It's a monumental sports network. There's the mass in network. It's on its own. If you will, it's not part of a bigger property. And it carries the two baseball teams. There's a lot of turmoil going on in that industry. We've inoculated ourselves and our fans to that. We've just opened the most advanced technology, invested almost $60 million in a digital first real studio. It's nicer and bigger than this one. Wow. I need to come over. You should. That's right. We raised the bar for you. I think you'll go and come back and say, how come they can do that? Let's do the next one of these in your studio. Oh, we'd love to do that. We're invested here, obviously. And we're here to stay in downtown Washington. And I'm glad we can talk about it. We'd like to continue following your story here. Anytime I'm honored to come here. And it's amazing the investments that you've made downtown right on New York Avenue. And we're almost neighbors. So, I'd love to come see you. Well, from low to Washington, Mayor Ted Leonsis. Thank you for the time. Thanks. Thanks for the invite. The news doesn't stop on the weekends. Context changes constantly. And now Bloomberg is the place to stay on top of it all. Hi, I'm David Gura. Join us every Saturday and Sunday for the new Bloomberg this weekend. I'm Christina Raffini. We'll bring you the latest headlines, in-depth analysis and big interviews, all the stories that hit home on your days off. And I'm Lisa Mateo, watch and listen to Bloomberg this weekend for thoughtful, enlightening conversations about business, lifestyle, people, and culture. On Saturday mornings, we put the past week's events into context, examining what happened in the markets and the world. That on Sundays, we speak with journalists, columnists, and key political figures to prepare you for the week ahead. 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