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00:00What do you guys get out of All-Star weekend business wise . That's a great way to reconnect with friends and business associates and for the most part when you're in the league the other owners are your competitors. They want to beat your brains out and then you come to an owner's meeting in a tech conference and you're really talking about shared goals and things that you can do together and so great networking effect. Then you learn a lot. I give the NBA a lot of credit this tech conference has become like the TED conferences. The quality of the speakers the quality of the people that they're bringing in has been superb. It's amazing the collection of people and talent that the NBA attracts not only from the NBA team ownership groups but all of the League partners. I mean you get some of the major Silicon Valley players and big tech brands that everyone is familiar with. To have everyone concentrated in one place for one week and just sort of an unbeatable experience Yeah I think it's hard to convey what we also weakens like this from a societal as well as a business standpoint. The Super Bowl is close but it's I don't know it's more of a party it seems like. Yeah I think the Super Bowl is more about the sponsors and I think the NBA all star event is more about the fans. And there's a connective celebration between the fans and the players and the players . It really matters to them in some other leagues. All Star games are kind of looked at as a necessary evil and when players are made also I'll cite the Pro Bowl OK. Exactly. Our players really want to be all stars when they're not picked for the All-Star game they're hurt they want to know what do I have to do to get that recognition. And I think because of that the elevation of the event and participation levels and the enthusiasm is quite high. There's some talk this morning about direct connections with fans more direct connection to the fans . I'm struck by that and the parallel with Draft Kings which you're an early investor and a large investor in and the acceptance of gambling in ways that weren't really imaginable I think 20 or 30 years ago to the Major Leagues. Well one of the major sports leagues. What do you think that is all about . Well I think that indoor sports are ascendant. NHL NBA why we just bought some AFL Arena Football League teams because you can track and monitor very crisply and clearly because of the contained nature of the arena. And the more we become a big data company the more attractive we'll be the Kinsey to millennials to sophisticated people who are care about Wall Street and we want to be big data companies distribution of that data and content and so being able to go direct to the consumer . I mean we look like SAS companies now and you look at real at a sports team sure you look NYSE bomber I believe pay two billion dollars for the Clippers . I think he looked and saw that just like a big software company . We've got 20 year deals with our sponsors that have built in three and a half percent increases. We have suites that are on five year contracts. We have annual contracts season tickets that we renew at 95 percent and in our heart we are a software big data company an e-commerce company because we know who our customers are. We track quietly their behavior yet and we know that they are buying three hundred dollar jerseys they're taking over to the game when we win they go to this bar and in so to get one that was a to three bars. But to get we talk about in the media business the software business engagement use ability for us to be able to get a community like Washington in D.C. a big super city can get a five rating on television and twenty thousand people two hundred nights a year for all of our events coming in and get to know how much time effort they spend to go to the game that becomes like a very very valuable business model. Accessibility is pretty key to us right. So we like to pride ourselves on being a multi-platform company you can watch our games on cable or you can download our new over-the-top service Monumental Sports Network and have more touch points to our teams that loan to our second family old drag kings alliance . Part of that I believe that sports is the great convener and you sit behind a screen and you're watching the game and now you're interacting in the first application was you're communicating you're trying to your friends you're in a community and now you're starting to have real interest in the outcome of the games and the players. And that's fantasy. It's daily fantasy is what really took off . But the next big growth area for media content and team owners will be gambling. And it's just a matter of time we see what's happened in Europe. We've made a big investment company called Sport Radar Sport Radar it is a sport radar started life as a way to do integrity assurance to make sure that betting gaming the odds were level playing field and it connected the casinos the gamblers and the leagues in Europe and Europe because because in Nevada you can't have the sports books talk to all the other sports folks it's part of the way. That's right. But makes no sense and the whole way the laws are constructed so that was that was meant to fight corruption and give gamblers a shot. But think of this in Northern Virginia you cannot play fantasy games. You can't smoke marijuana and you can gamble that there's casinos in Virginia in Washington D.C. you can't gamble you can't play fantasy games but you could smoke marijuana and you can grow it. And then in Maryland you can gamble like crazy. There's brand new MGM casino one of the best resorts in their portfolio now. You you can't play fantasy games but you can gamble in the casino and you can't smoke marijuana. So instead that it's all D.C. license plates. And I wonder what the rate are if the Raiders go to Las Vegas. What that will also mean just in terms we've just had that in the NHL . We we brought a team in in to Vegas and you know the community itself the fans will support it. Then you have all of the people that are coming to visit but you have to be very very careful on the integrity of the game. And so the sport book you know will not be commensurate if you will right there because you don't want anything untoward or anything that would would touch on a fan's notion that the outcome of the game is pure. So all right. Another question. Given the success of the league right now even the league now seem to be called the Jihye Lee right . You've got all the team values going up and looking for new revenue sources. I can't think of a single reason why there isn't room for at least one expansion team. Well if right now an expansion team would cut into the the media revenues and I was chairman of the NBA media committee and we negotiated a very very sizable deal. And it might it might even have been undervalued. As you look today the big convenience sellers always say yes well the big ratings driver the big value creator for cable is sports. We're really the only thing the only programming that people need to come to programmatically and advertisers count on it. You're making the case for other teams still that that could happen. Well so but if you brought in another team the price of that team would have to be over a billion dollars I would say because they would now get cut in to a big chunk they'd get a 30 first piece of a big big contract . And so so the game I believe has never been more popular. I think it is a global sport. The the the the joy and the beauty of the game. Give me a pair of sneakers Give me one basketball give me a hoop and and say that that is sitting on denominational gate. The great thing about basketball that wasn't thick with slang was yes. You founded Slate Magazine you caught that essence I grew up in Brooklyn New York and we that's all we did we lived. You slept playing basketball and there's such a beauty about the game and now these athletes are superhuman. We read my my Washington Wizards are playing really great basketball. The only game we've lost of late was to Cleveland on national TV and LeBron James hit a shot to tie the game at the buzzer game of the year. I was saying that's the game of the year. And it was superhuman. Now I hated it in the moment but I appreciate the skill the intelligence the the one of a kind once in a lifetime kind of moment that that was. And that's why people come to the NBA game that's you could see something that you'll talk about for a long long time and you don't get that with other entertainment you'll go to a restaurant and drive home and say boy that meal. You know that's the best French fry of memories. Yeah .

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Wizards Owner Leonsis on Sports Gambling, Expansion Teams

Ted Leonsis, Monumental Sports and Entertainment chief executive officer and owner of the Washington Wizards, and his son, Zach, discuss the future of sports technology and expansion teams with Bloomberg's Cory Johnson at the NBA All-Star Technology Summit in New Orleans. (Source: Bloomberg)

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