>> This program is made by MPT to enrich the diverse communities throughout our state and is made possible about it generous support of our members.

Thank you.

>> There is nothing quite a feeling of elation of saying something that you are a part of, put together a run and won a championship.

It's just an amazing feeling.

>> Every year we want to be competing for a championship, particularly in the competitive cycle, but the Capitals are in.

We are certainly going to do our best.

>> Yamada: Powering the future of pro-sports tonight.

Hello everyone, I'm Nancy Yamada for the "Sportsdesk" outside Nationals Park in southeast Washington D.C.

Later in the program we'll head inside the ball park to meet one of the minority owners of the Nats but first let's go downtown dc near the capital one arena.

Joining me is Zach Leonsis, he is the president and media and new enterprises for Monument Sports and Entertainment.

Zach thank you very much for joining us.

Let's start with the fact that we are next door to the Capital One arena.

Not inside the home of the Capitals and the Wizards and there is an 800 million-dollar reason for that, right.

here, and it's fitting we are sitting in our Monumental Sports Network studios.

We have had a lot of construction going on the past few years but two and a half years ago we opened up the facility, the finish and the look and feel of this is what we are trying to replicate next door at the Capital One arena.

Our arenas going on 30 years old, if you can believe that.

It's amazing the impact that the arena has had on downtown Washington D.C.

in our entire community.

We regularly attract up to three million people annually hosting up to 250 events every year.

We draw in lots of people from Virginia and Maryland into the district proper, people who come and spend their dollars here at the restaurants before and after games.

We are a big economic engine in the world's most powerful city.

Lifespan of arenas is typically around 30 years old, and so we wanted to make sure that a world class market like Washington has a world class arena.

Our fans deserve that.

Our players deserve that.

Our employees deserve that and we are trying to meet that moment.

So isn't a small little fates lift on a building.

This is practically a gut job.

This is a significant overhaul of the arena and when fans walk in upon the project's completion in the fall of 2027, I think they're going to be amazed by what they see.

And so our focus on renovating the building is not just future proofing it but positively impacting every single fan experience you can imagine.

>> Yamada: Let's talk about that.

So what will some of the big renovations, what will they look like?

>> Leonsis: We can start with the fact that our footprint is expanding.

We will go from about 900,000 square feet in our arena to 1.6 million.

That means we are getting bigger and larger concourse spaces, more spaces to hang out and enjoy premium hospitality opportunities.

More kitchens, improved food quality, brand new exterior facade on the building, new places to extend the game day experience before and after games.

We are going to be taking over a significant portion of the gallery place mall next door in the atrium, really opening up a brand new way for fans to enjoy the building before the game starts itself.

We couldn't be more excited to welcome fans back in our building this fall.

We are really focused on meeting our fans where they are today.

We know exactly what our fans are looking for and their experience as a capital one arena and a lot of our renovation projects are really in response to what our fans have been telling us that they want.

We are obviously in a world class market in Washington D.C.

It's the most powerful city in the world, the most powerful Capitol in the world deserves the world eats most important and best arena out there.

And so this isn't merely a face lift on our small renovation project this is a massive, frankly, gut job that I think when people come in the fall of 2027 at the conclusion of the project, their eyes are going to really be open as to what a brand new premium experience in sports should look like.

>> Yamada: Zach, you wear so many different hats.

How do you decide day to day how to spend your time and what to really prioritize?

>> Leonsis: Working in sports is such a privilege and a joy.

I think that working in sports is so different from any other business out there because we make such a great impact on our community.

You know, there's just something very special about our team brands because obviously our fans intertwine their identities with being a fan of our teams.

And so with that comes great responsibility.

Obviously on a day to day, you could be dealing with anything from operating the building to handling sales efforts, to player management, to our media operations here at the Monumental Sports Network.

Of course, there's some things that are more timely than others.

But ultimately, I think that it's fairly easy to prioritize because we always want to be focused on what really matters most to our fans.

And so we really try to do our best to operate a double bottom line business here.

I mean do we also want to be back in our community, too?

We've committed to a multimillion dollar effort through our district of play initiative, where we've uniformed over 100,000 high school students across multiple athletics and the like.

Last year we gave away 35,000 basketballs at D.C.

public school students.

This year we gave over 10,000 sneakers, trainers and cleats to different students.

>> Yamada: Let's talk about the Wizards and who the first draft pick.

What is the expectation this season?

And what can the franchise do to become more competitive?

>> Leonsis: Well, there is cleary a lot of excitement this off season heading into next year for the Wizards, in particular.

And you know a lot of people are going to focus on A.J.

Dybantsa and our first overall selection in this year's NBA draft, people are going to talk a lot about Trae Young as well and Anthony Davis.

But we've really been building for this moment over the last few years and I think that the thing that excites us the most is the fact that we are going to have a strong and complete team as opposed to just having one new player.

I think some of the players that we drafted and developed over the last three years including Alex Sarr, Kysean George and Trey Johnson and Bilal Coulibaly andWwill Riley and Bub Carrington.

I don't think the great strategies are built on completing and executing one thing.

You've got to have all encompassing strategy and we've really been building up for this moment.

I think the veteran players and Trae Young and Anthony Davis that we've added they're really going to help tutor along some of the younger players who are learning how to win in this league >> Yamada: Switching gears, so many fans were excited to see that OVov, Alex Ovechkin resigned for another year making this 22nd season which is pretty remarkable.

You know a lot of people are hoping that he might be able to actually secure one more Stanley Cup.

Is that the expectation?

>>Leonsis: Well, every year we want to be competing for a championship, particularly in the competetive cycle that the Capitals are in.

We're certainly going to do our best.

I think the Capitals had an amazing off season.

Chris Patrick, Brian Mcclellan and of course Dick Patrick, they deserve a ton of credit for preparing the team for this moment as well.

We're so lucky that the experience that we've had with Alex Ovechkin-- I mean very rarely do you see a super star player of Alex's stature one of the greatest players in league history, arguably at this point clearly the greatest athlete in Washington D.C.

sports history stick with one team his entire year and much less you know break the all time goal scoring record win a championship.

It has been an amazing run and we are going to really enjoy this season with Alex.

I think Alex is really encouraged to come back because he sees that we've got a really competitive roster.

>> Yamada: Switching gears to the mystic understand and the WNBA women sports, so really fast growing industry.

What does that momentum mean for the monumental?

>> Leonsis: Well it's been a ton of fun working with the some Is ticks and you know we take a lot of pride in the fact that we are the seconds longest tenured ownership group in the w WNBA and you know we should be honest.

It hasn'tt always been easy operating the business of women's professional basketball but we've always remained fully committed to the league and to the Mystics and the championing professional women's athletics in Washington D.C.

because the quality of the play of these players is through the roof and we couldn't be more happy that those investments have really started to pay off over the last three to four years much the rise in popularity for the WNBA has been meteoric.

And you know for those who us have been around this league for a long time say what has taken so long for everybody to catch up.

This is an amazing game one of the most happiest moments ever was when the Mystics won a championship in 2019.

This is a team now that has gone through a competitive rebuild process as well.

We've got six first round picks from the last two years on our team.

We have the youngest member on the w WNBA and they're competing now for a playoff spot.

>> Yamada: Fans have more ways to watch than ever.

Some people say it is confusing and it is expensive.

How do you expect the viewing experience to really evolve over the next five years or so.

>> Leonsis: Well, clearly there's been a lot of stress in the media industry at large, but I'm really proud of our efforts here.

I think where you know, there have been other organizations, media companies or teams that have really retreated, we have invested into our product and so I'm really proud of the stability that we have been able to provide for our fans.

And again we want to be meeting our fans wherever they want to be met.

And so that means continuing carriage on cable and satellite through major providers, including Comcast, Xfinity, providers like direct TV also taking our rights direct to consumer, that's a huge opportunity for us.

We have a particularly young market here in the d D.M.V.

We skew really for millennials and Gen-Z customers and those are obviously the folks who are never subscribing to cable or cutting the cord.

And so we've got to remain available and accessible to those individuals.

>> Yamada: Are you feeling that the future is a hybrid of subscription screaming and bundled services in a way?

>> Leonsis: Definitely because you know, we are always going to have customers who prefer their current viewing behavior through cable and satellite, and that's a great product offering.

But at the same time, they're just new generations of fans who have created their own and very different habits for viewing media.

We see, you know, free model emerging with YouTube and ad supported growing popularity.

You know, previously we made investments in eSports, which is, you know, the world's first digital first linear second sort of live event opportunities.

So we've learned a lot from that.

>> Yamada: I'm curious how do you define success beyond wins and losses?

>> Leonsis: Well, we have to judge ourselves on wins and losses.

When we think about our business, things really roll up into three different buckets and we can walk and chew gum and accomplish all of them at once.

I think our primary focus is we want to build contending teams with long championship windows.

We've won a Stanley Cup.

We've won a WNBA championship.

We desperately want to compete and win an NBA championship in the future.

We want to din additional Stanley Cups and WNBA championships, too.

That's the best thing we can do for our community.

That's the number one way we can service our fans.

It's the number one way that we can drive our business.

Nothing bad comes from winning championships or competing for them, too.

Second, we want to build a great enterprise that is quickly growing, that employs lots of people, that pays taxes, that uplifts the downtown D.C.

community, aspiring to build the world eats most valuable regional sports entertainment and a prides as a noble and ambitious goal from ours from a business perspective and third we want to leave more than we take.

We want to champion a double bottom line business, mention some of the philanthropic efforts we have been really focused on lately.

That's really truly organic to who we are.

>> Yamada: If we could, I want to talk about working with your father.

I imagine working with family is amazing, but also comes with its own challenges.

How do you manage the working relationship while also preserving that father and son relationship?

>> Leonsis: I'm very lucky.

I'm very lucky.

I'm very privileged.

The opportunity for me to see my father as often as I do is a wonderful blessing and something that, you know, I know later on in life I'm going to look back and feel an incredible appreciation for.

I'm so lucky that I'm so close with my father.

We are best friends.

We obviously can be very honest with each other.

We can bounce ideas off of each other.

We can practice the Socratic method and try to get to the right outcome together and what not.

And so ultimately we have a lot of fun.

And I think that's really what this business is all about.

And the same way we create memories through sports are the same way we hope all of our fan base creates memory through sports.

Some of my earliest memories growing up are my father taking me to games.

And so to be able to extend that through to our business, you know, it's an incredible privilege and opportunity.

>> Yamada: One final question.

How do you decide what projects to invest in, what's worthy of putting in the monumental ecosystem so to speak?

Is there anything that is really exciting you right now where you are thinking, this is the direction that monumental needs to go?

We need to pursue this?

>> Leonsis: I think we want to provide opportunities that we feel we can provide a competitive advantage to.

We I think we want to find opportunities that we can fully integrate into our platform of monumental.

I this I we also want to find things that resonate with our fans.

>> Yamada: Zach, it has been a fun conversation.

Thank you for your time.

>> Leonsis: Thank you for your time.

Appreciate.

>> Yamada: Let's find out what some fans in our area think about their favorite D.C.

sports team.

>> I like the wizard.

They have been on a losing streak for a long time but I think they're going to turn it around.

>> I love basketball.

I the wizard have been struggling for a little while but I think they will get better.

They're a good group of guys so it would be great for everybody to support them.

>> They are having a rough road but I think they're going to do better things coming up.

>> Yamada: And how a local sports podcaster weighs in on the Washington nationals.

>> Nats have had a pretty good season all things considered.

Their it hitting was definitely better than expected.

They're not going to be contending this year so they shouldn't be buying.

They should really only sell if it continues to help them with their rebuild.

If they can keep up with the space that they're currently at, they'll be ahead of their rebuild timeline and set up nicely for some winter moves and next season.

>> Yamada: As promised we are going to Nationals park.

John joining me is Paxton baker, an entrepreneur businessman philanthropy and minority owner of the Washington Nationals.

Thank you for letting me come here on this beautiful day.

Let's begin with how you got involved with the Nationals.

And why is it important to you to become an investor in this franchise.

>> Baker: Dream of a lifetime.

Bigger dream than I possibly could have imagined but the path for it directly was one day I was in the dental chair of a Maryland dentist named Dr.

Ronnie Rosenberg and he asked me if I had been following the path of the Washington Nationals who had moved to Washington D.C.

in 2005.

I said I was following it in the newspaper.

He said how close are you.

I said not close.

He said would you like to meet the Lerner family.

I said yeah, I knew the Lerners from the White Flint Mall and Tyson's corner and the Dulles Town Center I knew their names and he said would you like to meet him.

I said we would love the opportunity.

>> Yamada: What does it mean to be a minority owner in the terms of influence and decision making.

>> Baker: The Lerners are the majority owner and the majority owner makes the majority decisions and they have the right to and with them it has been a great relationship, the Lerner family have grown to have a tremendous amount of respect and love for them.

It's been a wonderful friendship and business relationship across the board.

And I would say that we get the opportunity to have our voiced header.

The final decisions, the majority owner's decision, they certainly have the right to that, but we do have dialogue around different pieces and you get a chance to be heard, you get I chance to be in the room many times.

And they treated us with phenomenal amount of respect and dignity and the relationship has grown every year since then.

>> Yamada: Beyond the Nationals, you've invested in sports leagues around the world.

Talk about some of these ventures and what's the allure?

>> Baker: I think it's a great asset class, sports itself I think is a phenomenal asset class.

And like investments and the relationship part is the glue, in my opinion, of all kind of the underlying factor of ownership is how well you get along with people, people like you, if people respect you, if people have a chance to see what your track record has been.

I have been a part of three different ownership groups that have won championships.

There's nothing quite a feeling of elation of seeing something that you are part of, put together, a run and won a championship.

It's an amazing feeling.

>> Yamada: You are a busy guy.

How do you get around to watch all of these games?

>> Baker: I'm here the most.

I'm here in Washington the most and we have 81 home games, baseball, as you would know, is 162 games for a season, 81 home games.

Our home schedule is as long as hockey and basketball's whole season.

So I try to make about-- I try to make as many games as I can, which ends up being about 50 to 60 games out of an 81-game home schedule.

So I've seen a lot of baseball in the last 20 years.

This is our 20th year owning the club and every one of them is special.

I'm still a fan as well.

Still somewhere inside of me is little kid who played shortstop and loved the game of baseball and played guard and basketball and love the game of basketball as well.

>> Yamada: You said when you come to the park sometimes when you wear your jersey they ask you, right.

>> Baker: I do.

Batting practices is right behind us and I've put on the uniform that you see.

And when I'm in the locker room before coming out here some of the guys asked me from where I was transferring from.

And now that I'm in my mid 60s, to be mistaken for a pro-athlete, it's nothing but an incredible honor.

I'm still the kid around that sport that I was when I was four, five or six years old.

>> Yamada: You are passionate I know about technology and really utilizing to it grow audiences.

Talk about that.

>> Baker: This here, a phone is pretty amazing.

It has the power of this and how many different things can it pop off of it certainly from a knowledge perspective on being able to ask any questions to your phone that you possibly want to have answered, the power of that just to zip it, so for sports, it grows it on it because there are so many different apps from MLB apps to basketball apps to score apps.

There is a gazillion different apps on your phone by way of research and learning information, literally at the power of being able to just type in a question or ask a question to your phone I think that has done nothing but growing in all the sports.

There is also on it being able to watch sports.

So on my phone, I can watch something that's going on in Australia, which is 14 hours ahead type wise.

I spend a lot of time over in Asia as well.

And being able to see what's going on at home or vice versa just literally at the pop of a-- just pulling up something on your phone, is nothing short of amazing.

So it has the capacity off of it to build audiences, which is what all the sports are attempting to do a daily basis is how do we build audiences.

So being able to utilize technology from that perspective... >> Yamada: There is still limited diversity in sports ownership.

What real change needs to happen, in your opinion?

>> Baker: Well, I think a lot of it is happening, maybe not as quick as everybody might want it to, but it's a relationship-based game.

And so ownership has the right to kind of pick who they would like to be partners for and so if there is enterprising people out there who are building relationships on a regular basis, and your passion kind of comes through relationships, that is how I got into the initial relationship with the Lerner family.

>> You have accomplished so much as an entertainment executive, entrepreneur, philanthropist.

What is next for you?

What intrigues you?

What are you thinking?

I'm going to look into that.

>> Baker: One, with the partnerships that I'm in to help build culture and to help build a winning culture.

It's an interesting piece in that you are never going to win all the time for baseball out of 162 games.

The teams that win 100 games or more are like the championship timber teams.

And so that means you are losing 62-- 50 to 60 games and you are still a great team many, whens pretty-- like that many losses.

It's not an easy thing to do.

I mean chemistry is everything.

So what we have worked at building here with the Nationals is a win little culture and a winning culture and there are new leagues.

I'm super excited about women's sports.

I have been a partner with both groups here, the Washington Spirit when he won the 2021 championship.

I exited that group and bought back into the next women's soccer team which is D.C.

Power and coming next year there is going to be women's volleyball that's coming into D.C.

and I will be a part of that as well.

I'm really excited about that.

It's going to be called D.C.

flight by the way.

>> Yamada: D.C.

Flight, you heard it here first, right?

>> Baker: Coming into Washington.

I'm excited about that.

I think volleyball is going to do nothing but grow as a sport and I think more sports are going to come around.

There is going to be some sports in two or three years from now, maybe it's going to be cricket, right or-- >> Yamada: Pickleball.

>> Baker: Right.

And no one really heard of pickleball 10 years ago but one of the fastest growing sports that exists.

Those are exciting things for me.

>> Yamada: Looking ahead what do you think the MLB needs to do to keep the loyal fans and attract a new generation.

>> Baker: One good thing about MLB if there is nothing more for baseball is the amount of research and statistics it is a statistic driven sport more than anything else that has been out there is the amount of research that is around it.

So we are driving all these research and kind of like how do we apply it.

And so the game itself is moving quicker.

That was one of the complaints about it was that it's just kind of a slow meandering kind of a thing and with the pitch clock that came in, that's knocked about 25 minutes off of a game and the games are moving quick quicker.

But it's still a beautiful game because for basketball and football, which are I'm both passion passionate about, the same thing for soccer, you are moving up and down.

You are kind of like looking.

So farce experience, I bring a lot of clients, friends and family out to the park.

I think it's the best game for spending time with somebody is being able to sit outside on a beautiful day or a beautiful night and participate with the game.

So there are some things that I hope don't change and remain preserved.

And other things I think that have room to grow and pick up.

And then with all of the research and a lot of the young people who have passion for it, they're helping change the game.

That's one of the things we did here in Washington this year in particular, was brought in a new general manager.

We brought in a new manager, we've got the youngest ones in the sport right now, youngest manager at 33, youngest G.M.

at 35.

So incorporating youthful thoughts, youthful mentality, vigor, drive, energy into the game.

That's all something that needs to continue to happen.

>> Yamada: How do you feel about the Washington Nationals future as a ball club?

Will they be winning another title soon.

>> Baker: Absolutely.

How soon, we'll see.

But I mean we've already made amazing improvements for where we were last year.

>> Yamada: Paxton Baker, thank you for your time.

Thanks for watching us.

You can watch our programs and shorts on YouTube.

Just search Sportsdesk.

For everyone on the team, I'm Nancy Yamada.

We'll see you next time.