Laurene Powell Jobs, business executive, philanthropist, and widow of the late Steve Jobs, is selling off her stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the parent company that owns the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, and Washington Mystics. Sportico’s Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams reported the news on Wednesday.
The buyers of the stake are two separate parties: a Qatari sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, and a Texas-based private equity firm, Arctos Partners. Powell Jobs has owned the minority stake in Monumental, valued initially at $500 million or 20 percent of the company, since 2017.
Powell Jobs, who was once Monumental’s largest shareholder outside of Ted Leonsis, is selling her stake at an enterprise value of $7.2 billion. The exact split between the two parties is not yet known, but, according to Sportico, neither group is acquiring any board seats or other governance rights.
QIA bought a 5 percent passive minority stake in Monumental in June 2023, making it the first and only sovereign wealth fund to invest directly in a major US sports team, which remains true now. As a sovereign wealth fund, QIA is entirely owned by the government of Qatar, which has increasingly invested in sports over recent years.
The Qatari government has been accused of using its increased presence in sports as “sportswashing,” an effort to help improve the nation’s outward-facing reputation, despite serious concerns about human rights at home. For example, the country hosted the 2022 World Cup amidst significant controversy, winning the bid through bribes of FIFA officials, according to the US Justice Department.
Most of Qatar’s population and almost all of its workforce consist of migrant workers who are regularly unpaid or underpaid and cannot leave their jobs 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.
Arctos already boasts a vast portfolio of stakes in professional sports teams, including shares in the Golden State Warriors, Liverpool FC, the Boston Red Sox, the San Francisco Giants, the Los Angeles Chargers, the Buffalo Bills, the Aston Martin F1 team, and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Both the NHL and NBA will need to approve the deal for it to be officially completed.
