The D.C. area’s major regional sports network will no longer be an away team’s property. Comcast is selling NBCUniversal’s 67% stake in NBC Sports Washington to District-based Monumental Sports & Entertainment.
Monumental, which bought the remaining 33% of NBC Sports Washington in 2016, announced the pending transaction with the Philadelphia cable giant Tuesday.
“Monumental Sports & Entertainment’s interest in full ownership of the network is a unique opportunity,” the release quotes NBC Sports Regional Networks president Bill Bridgen. “Their leaders have been engaged and collaborative partners in NBC Sports Washington who, like us, value local sports media and are committed to serving fans now and investing in the future.”
Monumental founder and CEO Ted Leonsis tweeted, “This is key to our strategy for developing our one-of-a-kind sports and entertainment platform: a super-regional sports & entertainment business featuring multiple teams, multiple venues, multiple networks and multiple technologies – fully integrated.”
The deal will put a wide array of sports teams and venues under the same corporate umbrella as the RSN carrying their games. Monumental, formed by Leonsis after his 1999 purchase of the NHL’s Washington Capitals, now owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, the Capital One Arena in downtown D.C., and a variety of smaller properties that include esports and sports betting.
Leonsis has also often been mentioned as a possible buyer of Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals.
The announcement did not disclose financial terms but said NBCUniversal will provide distribution and production facilities and resources for up to 18 months.
“I believe this is a unique situation given Monumental’s role as a longtime minority stakeholder that wants to take full control of the DC-area RSN as a strategic complement to its sports teams,” emailed Tammy Parker, principal analyst for global telecom consumer services at GlobalData. “To that end, this appears to be a win-win deal for both sides of the transaction.”
Comcast purchased the RSN then known as Home Team Sports in 2001 from Viacom and Fox Sports. It soon renamed the network Comcast SportsNet; in 2017, Comcast began rebranding its RSNs with the NBC Sports moniker.
The Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand reported that Monumental plans to rename the channel at some point and merge it with its existing Monumental Sports Network, a direct-to-consumer streaming service that today does not carry Caps and Wizards games live.
Parker commented that this deal raises questions about the fate of Comcast’s five other NBC Sports regional networks, which face the same cord-cutting pressures as other channels and, like other sports networks, may also have rights issues that prevent a quick launch of a direct-to-consumer streaming service.
“The streaming environment is unsettled,” she wrote. “If Comcast opts to sell its other RSNs, it’s not clear that there is a buyer or buyers waiting in the wings.”