Washington Wizards, Mystics and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis is creating a $10 million venture capital fund to invest in tech startups to disrupt the sports and entertainment industry. Leonsis unexpectedly announced the new fund on Monday at a conference on the technology and innovation in the works at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the company Leonsis heads that operates the sports teams and the Verizon Center.
The investment will go to "sports and entertainment tech startups and companies that we can help nest and drive adoption," Leonsis explained in an exclusive email interview with DC Inno.
Leonsis explained that the new fund, slated to debut in 2017, will have its own management team and partners, reporting to Monumental senior vice president Randy Boe. It will be entirely separate from venture capital firm Revolution, where Leonsis is a founding partner.
Sports tech startups are not a new interest for Leonsis. He's an angel investor in video tech startup Kiswe, which has a lot of potential in sports. And Revolution recently invested $44 million in data analytics startup Sportradar, another company that is touted as a useful tool in the sports industry, whose technology was recently integrated into Facebook's live sports feature.
In his remarks at the conference, Leonsis emphasized the bigger impact that sports can have on a city. The Shakespeare Theater was an adult bookstore 35 years ago, and it was the Verizon Center and the sports teams it hosts that really changed things, according to Leonsis.
"Very few iconic brands define a community more than sports," Leonsis said. "Without the Verizon Center, this building [the Marriott Marquis hotel] would not be here."
Along with the news about the fund, Leonsis dropped hints that he will be bringing new franchises under the Monumental umbrella. Though he didn't say which teams or sports are under consideration, they will apparently be for the summer when it's not basketball or hockey season.
"There's something incredibly noble and wonderful about sports," Leonsis said. "Sports bring communities closer together."
