By Ian Thomas

Copyright cnbc

While MLS’s D.C. United has brought on several minority investors in recent years, valuing it at upwards of $800 million, there is no indication that the team is for sale. The team was previously acquired by an investor group from AEG for roughly $26 million in 2005.

Leonsis acknowledged the challenges of acquiring teams in an era of skyrocketing valuations, regardless of sport. He also said he’s looking at other opportunities within sports, such as lacrosse and women’s hockey, as well as ways to work with non-MSE-owned teams in the area, such as the NWSL’s Washington Spirit.

“I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy a team today,” he said. “You’re talking about billions of dollars in debt; that debt used to be earmarked for operations, now it’s being earmarked for entry to buy the team.”

A future acquisition could be aided by outside investors. In 2023, Leonsis sold a 5% stake in Monumental to the Qatar Investment Authority, a deal that valued the organization at around $4 billion at that time. It also broke new ground for the investment of sovereign wealth funds into U.S. sports, which followed moves by professional sports leagues to allow private equity firms and funds to purchase team stakes.

Leonsis has previously said that QIA is treated as investors, not partners, and it is a passive investment.

His belief in the platform model being built at MSE is only growing as the company invests more into it, and he said it is operating more like a SaaS business than perhaps outsiders realize. Leonsis said the company has upwards of $750 million in revenue yearly, a number he expects to reach $1 billion in the next three years.

“We sell subscriptions, season tickets, and suites; we’re a growth company, but 70% of that business is contracted long term,” he said. “We look like Oracle, Salesforce.”

Could the desire to grow that model eventually mean buying teams outside of the D.C. metro area?

Leonsis recalled a trip he took to London in 2019 when the Wizards played the New York Knicks in the city. While in London, he met with several investment bankers who took him to see a variety of soccer teams, including Chelsea. At an NBA board of governors meeting not long after, Leonsis said just a few of the NBA owners were not bidding on Chelsea in some capacity.

“When I came home, I thought that we can’t do this,” he said. “This is so inauthentic. I didn’t play soccer, I’m not going to live in this neighborhood, I’m not going to be able to add value and our platform can’t help.”

But that doesn’t mean every move Leonsis has made in the Washington, D.C.-area has been well received. MSE met plenty of criticism in 2023 after a previously announced plan to relocate the Capitals and Wizards to a $2 billion complex in Virginia fell through. MSE and the city of Washington, D.C., later struck a deal to renovate the existing facility.

“I’m just going to stay in my 10 million household area,” he said.