The Qatar Investment Authority will purchase a minority stake in Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, and Washington Mystics. With the sale, QIA will become the first sovereign wealth fund to invest in American pro sports.
QIA will purchase roughly a 5% share of the organization in a deal that values MSE at $4.05 billion.
The news was first reported by Sportico’s Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams.
As a sovereign wealth fund, QIA is entirely owned by the government of Qatar, which has increasingly invested in sports over recent years. The country hosted the 2022 World Cup amidst significant controversy, while another Qatari fund owns stakes in multiple European soccer clubs.
That increased presence in sports comes alongside significant concerns about human rights in the country. Most of Qatar’s population and almost all of its workforce consists of migrant workers who are regularly unpaid or underpaid and cannot leave their job or the country without their employer’s permission.
Between 2010 and 2021, more than 6,500 migrant workers died in the country. Qatar also has a notoriously poor record of human rights abuses against LGBTQ+ people. However, presence in international sports has served to help the country improve its reputation on the international stage.
Both the NHL and NBA will need to approve the deal. Per The Athletic, the NHL’s executive committee — which includes MSE majority owner Ted Leonsis — has already approved the sale.
The NBA only recently allowed sovereign funds to own “passive, non-controlling, minority investments” in teams, NBA spokesman Mike Bass told Sportico, adding that the NBA is currently reviewing the proposed QIA deal.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver spoke about foreign investment in teams in early June, prior to the news of QIA’s involvement with MSE. During an episode of the Dan Patrick Show, Silver rejected concerns about accepting investments from nations with poor human rights records, instead framing it as positive for the community:
I hear the comments about sport washing. On the other hand: you’re talking about it, others are talking about it. It’s not as if some errant golfer can say one thing about his reaction to Saudi Arabia investing in golf and that’s left at that. I think people are pretty sophisticated.
The same way, the World Cup–the football World Cup, soccer World Cup–brought enormous attention to Qatar. I think people learn about these countries, learn about what’s happening in the world in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.
So I think the media does its job, but at the end of the day I also think, now talking specifically about the NBA, where we’re such a global sport, I think people are a little too dismissive these days about the benefits that come from the commonality around sports.
With a sport like basketball, our finals are distributed virtually everywhere in the world. The sport is played everywhere in the world. It’s an opportunity to bring people together.
News of the sale comes the day after MSE announced a rebrand of regional sports network NBC Sports Washington, which will become Monumental Sports Network. Monumental has been the sole owner of the network since last August.
Headline photo: Elizabeth Kong/RMNB
