Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis doesn’t appear to be distressed about his reported $2 billion bid to buy the Washington Nationals being rejected in 2023.
“It takes two to tango but [the Lerners] aren’t ready to sell,” he said at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s “Game Plan” event on Tuesday, maintaining he still has a good relationship with the Lerner family, owners of the Nationals.
Per NBC News’ Greg Rosenstein, Leonsis, the owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics is still pursuing his goal of owning more sports teams. He said he hasn’t ruled out another bid to buy the Nationals and even an attempt to buy the city’s Major League Soccer team D.C. United.
Leonsis told Bethesda Magazine last October he wants to offer year-round compelling programming on Monumental Sports Network, the broadcast home of his teams. Owning a baseball team, he believes, would do that and provide another revenue stream to fund championship-caliber rosters.
“We don’t want to buy a baseball team so I can get programming on the network,” Leonsis explained then. “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… 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.”
The Nationals saw a sharp decline after winning the World Series in 2019, failing to win more than 71 games through the 2024 season and selling off major franchise assets like outfield Juan Soto, pitcher Max Scherzer and shortstop Trea Turner while focusing on developing young prospects. This year, the team is on pace to finish last in the National League East division for the fourth time since 2019.
DC United, owned by DC United Holdings and controlled by Jason M. Levien and Stephen Kaplan, has finished in the bottom half of the MLS table for five consecutive seasons since last appearing in the playoffs in 2019. The franchise hasn’t won a major trophy since the 2013 U.S. Open Cup.
“I’m very interested, but there’s no rush,” Leonsis said of any future bids in October. “Obviously, I’m not going anywhere.”
