“We want to win out; we want to win tonight and we want to win on Sunday. We’ll then get into the play-in and then we’ll see what happens going into our season. But our focus is to try to continue this upswing. We took a step back with the injury to Brad [Beal], but everyone in the organization is pleased that we’ve gotten this far. All of the focus is on just getting into that play-in.”
Ted Leonsis Rumors
Leonsis did, though, drop a line later in his press conference that could be applied to the Wizards and their situation with Brooks. When discussing the challenges of the 2020-21 season amid a pandemic, and how the coronavirus affected the Wizards, he said this: “We start every season with every one of our teams as we have to make the playoffs. If we can make the playoffs, then you can aspire to winning a championship,” Leonsis said. Brooks, 55, has the Wizards in position to make the play-in tournament, with a magic number of just one. They could clinch on Friday night with a win over the Cavs.
Fred Katz: Wizards owner Ted Leonsis says he is an “unabashed fan” of the NBA’s. play-in tournament.
Ted Leonsis: All of us @MSE are disappointed with the city’s failure to grant our waiver allowing fans to attend @Capitals & @WashWizards games this season. Our staff have worked tirelessly putting in place numerous infrastructure upgrades & health and safety protocols to protect fans & staff
“I’m really interested in how to get out of the notion that I own a sports team and I have local media rights and a local market and I’m only as good as the size of my market. That to me is what is so interesting here,” Leonsis said. “There are eight billion people on the planet; six billion connected to high-speed internet; 500 million with interest in basketball. I have the Washington Capitals and I have 20,000 seats that I can sell to people 41 times a season. My market seems finite. A global market seems infinite.” He theorized that could include selling NFT tickets to fans who’ll never attend a game in person but are willing to pay for digital keepsakes. “A buyer can hold onto the memory, then resell the ticket,” he said. “I can sell a ticket to eight billion people. Previously, I could sell a ticket to 800,000 or 10 million, whatever is in your market. When people start to wrap their heads around this, it will be astounding the sea change this represents.”
In the simplest of terms, Sportradar packages data from hundreds of thousands of sporting events each year and sells it to media companies and sports betting operators. After securing exclusive data partnership agreements with almost every major professional sports league, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, FIFA, and more, Sportradar has seen its valuation skyrocket in recent years. At $10 billion, the deal represents a 316% jump from their previous $2.4 billion valuation. The craziest part? The $2.4 billion valuation was in 2018. Current investors include: National Football League, Mark Cuban (Mavericks), Ted Leonsis (Wizards), Michael Jordan (Hornets).
The NBA has created a blockchain advisory committee comprised of a number of its billionaire owners, including Mark Cuban and Joe Tsai, according to multiple people familiar with the plans. The other members of the Blockchain Advisory Subcommittee, as the NBA has dubbed it, are Ted Leonsis, Steve Pagliuca, Vivek Ranadive and Ryan Sweeney, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the matter is private. The group’s mandate is to explore ways to integrate blockchain across the league’s business.
