Monumental Sports & Entertainment Founder, Chair & CEO Ted Leonsis recently spoke about why his organization created the all-digital Monumental Network and "what that will mean for the Wizards' and Capitals' TV rights in the future," according to Dan Steinberg of the WASHINGTON POST. Leonsis, speaking during a recent appearance at the Univ. of Maryland, said, "All Comcast SportsNet does is take our programming and sell it to cable partners. They sell it to Comcast Cable, and Cox Cable, and Verizon FiOS and DirecTV. So they arbitrage; they’re a middle man for my content. And as time has gone on, what they get paid by their cable affiliates is much more than they pay me. And so as time goes on and we burn off our rights, it’s incumbent on us that we should have our own network. ... Let’s come at this from a digital standpoint, with young people, and they’ll do digital video. We can win Emmy awards. We have. Our programming is fantastic. We can produce with these young people socially shared media, and we’ll get ready for when our rights come up. And then once we re-claim our rights, then we would go to Comcast and Verizon and DirecTV, and say there is no Comcast SportsNet, you deal with Monumental Network. ... And we’ll build a lot of value into our network, and then we’ll be a fully developed regional sports and entertainment (company). We’ll own the building, which is really an eCommerce platform. ... And then if we had more revenues, then we contribute half of that to the players, the salary cap would go up, we’d be able to bring in more players" (WASHINGTONPOST.com, 1/22).
