Ted Leonsis’s interest in owning the Washington Nationals is well known, but he apparently doesn’t want to stop there. He also mentioned MLS’s DC United while discussing his interest in adding more sports teams to his portfolio.
Leonsis made the revelation while speaking with Bethesda Magazine for a story in their September/October 2024 issue. He was asked directly if he had an interest in owning the Nationals.
“I have high interest in consolidating sports teams in our region,” Leonsis said to Bethesda Magazine. “It can include the Nationals. It can include DC United. The media landscape has changed dramatically over the last five years. And media is a major revenue driver for teams and leagues.”
Leonsis already owns the NHL’s Washington Capitals, NBA’s Washington Wizards, NBA G League’s Capital City Go-Go, and WNBA’s Washington Mystics. He also owns the media company their games air on, Monumental Sports Network, which operates as a TV channel and a direct-to-consumer streaming subscription service.
Having more compelling offerings on Monumental Sports Network is part of Leonsis’s strategy for wanting to own more teams, but his biggest desire is to bring more trophies back to DC. To do so, he says his company needs to continue to grow.
“We don’t want to buy a baseball team so I can get programming on the network,” Leonsis explained. “We want to buy a team to get programming on the network to build a big business to invest into each of the teams so that we can win and compete for championships.”
He added, “Owning a baseball team would double the amount of games and be year-round. You can see, from a business standpoint, that’s important. But why it’s important for the team is, how can you define yourself as a big market team? How can you attract free agents? How can you keep really good young players from going somewhere else? …So I look at the business side as a way to generate the resources and dollars to position us as a big, important market, where I think we should be. We want to be a destination where players want to come, and you need to have the resources to do it.”
Leonsis reportedly offered over $2 billion to buy the Nationals last year, but ultimately, the team’s current owners, the Lerners, rebuffed him and temporarily ended their sales process in February.
Undaunted, Leonsis reiterated his interest in buying the Nats in May.
“We’re very close partners with the Lerners, so we have nothing but friendly relations, but they’re business people, we’re business people,” Leonsis said then. “We will make a credible and strong offer, and we’ll continue speaking. I’m very interested, but there’s no rush… obviously, I’m not going anywhere.”
DC United is owned by DC United Holdings and controlled by Jason M. Levien and Stephen Kaplan. The two previously were investors in the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies before buying UK soccer club Swansea City. Per Sportico, the team was valued at “roughly $60 million” when the pair first bought into the club in 2012.
Fast forward to 2022, DC United, which also has minority stakes from NFL running back Mark Ingram and rapper Yo Gotti, was valued at $800 million — an increase of nearly $740 million over 11 years.
