Why the sale of the Washington Commanders is good for Wizards fans
You have heard the news: Dan Snyder is finalizing a deal to sell the Washington Commanders for 6.05 billion dollars to Josh Harris, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils hockey team. Unlike most of the push notifications I get on my phone, this is legitimately big news. There are only 32 NFL teams, it’s the most popular sport in the US by far, and sales of pro teams are rare. Of course, the real reason it’s news is because of Snyder himself, a man who answers the question, “what if a rigged claw machine game got its wish granted and became a real boy?”
Accountability
A key question given that the Wizards season is over, is now what? There was a point in the season where things could have gone differently, where it looked like the Wizards were getting better. But the team couldn’t make it last. This was encapsulated in the collapse against the Atlanta Hawks in early March, but, really, there’s no one moment. The lack of depth and poor play design have been lingering issues. The problem is structural. The problem is in the team’s leadership.
Corey Kispert articulated this problem as Hoop District reported, “I think it’s a mix of accountability, from player-to-player, from coach-to-player, from player-to-coach, within our organization.” Kispert’s quote is great and worth reading in full, but it also highlights how, when we talk about accountability for a given team, we focus on the players and coach. This makes sense. These are the guys on the court, missing shots, not making line-up changes (or unfortunately making them in some cases), and who we spend our hard earned time and money to see. But organizational culture is, in my experience, set at the top. The accountability that is missing, which people on Twitter have pointed to and podcasters have talked about, is with Wizards owner, Ted Leonsis, the man who has hired the general managers who have hired the coaches who have put the players on the court.
The Attention Market
The DC sports ecosystem is pretty robust. We have every major sport represented and a bunch of minor ones, too, at almost every skill level. But there is only one team that has culturally carried any weight in this town: the Washington Commanders née Football Team née you know the one. The football team is so prominent locally that not being a fan of them and instead choosing to root for the Cowboys (or to a lesser extent some other team like the Ravens) becomes a statement that will get you looks and comments that cut across class and racial lines. Dan Synder’s toxicity has diminished some of this power to the point that people might support the football team, but watching the games themselves is less of a priority.
And in the gap that Snyder has created by running the football team into the ground, Ted Leonsis has been able to flourish. Yes, the Caps have done well, really well. But the real success story is the fact that Leonsis’s ownership group, Monumental Sports and Entertainment, hasn’t had to worry about serious competition from the most popular sport in the DC-area.
And, yes, it’s true, that the Wizards face competition in attention and merchandise from the Nationals, that other championship team Leonsis doesn’t own. But data suggests there is less overlap between the potential casual baseball fan and the potential casual basketball fan. There is also the fact that baseball starts as the NBA regular season is winding down, while hockey, football, and basketball all overlap during the late fall and early winter months.
Now that the Commanders have a new owner and will likely try to show they are truly refreshing the football team’s organization and culture from top to bottom, the competition for attention will, hopefully, increase. I’m not talking about competition for attention from sickos like me, who are going to watch the Wizards dust off the same playbook next year as they used this year, or my football equivalent. I’m talking about the person who has a few hours free in a week and from time to time thinks, “hey, maybe I’ll see if some friends want to catch a game.” The “game” in question is less important to that person, a marginal fan, who just wants to have a nice time out.
At this point, you might say, “well there was already competition because the Caps and the Wizards overlap!” For the marginal fan, just looking to grab a drink and put on a game, this is true. And the fact that Leonsis has more or less underinvested in accountability for the Wizards while changing general managers and coaches multiple times for the Capitals tells you all you need to know about where his attention has been. To some extent I get that. There are only so many hours in the day. If you have to make a big decision about your generally winning hockey team or your generally losing basketball team, it makes sense to focus on your hockey team. It might even be a better business decision to semi-neglect one franchise since the competition for attention is fierce, not just from other sports but from television, video games, human connection, and whatever else people do in the sliver of time between work and sleep. But either way, you are getting the attention and dollars that flow with it whether it comes from basketball or hockey.
Now, though, with new ownership of the football team, the marginal fan has a real choice from late October to early January (or if the football team is lucky, February): whether to drop money on tickets with friends for a Sunday football game out at the new stadium where RFK used to be or a Tuesday/Wednesday night game right after work in Chinatown to watch the Wizards/Capitals. Just like there are only so many hours in the day for Leonsis and his team, there are also only so many hours and dollars for most folks to spend on leisure. And for a majority of people sitting in any arena or stadium for whatever sport, that might be the one game of any sport they go to that year.
The analogy that comes to mind in why this matters is magazine sales. In an interview I heard a while back with the former editor of Vibe, Danyel Smith, she basically said, magazine subscribers are what keep the lights on, but the real money is in the person who decides to pick up a copy of your magazine while waiting in line at the grocery store, the person who buys the latest issue at the airport. And so, magazine editors do whatever they can to get the cover right, to make sure when you’re thinking about whether to buy a candy bar or that issue of Vibe with Tupac on it (in this scenario it’s 1995 and magazines are still a thing), you go for the latest issue.
I don’t know the ins and outs of running a sports team. I recognize that it’s way more complicated and stressful than I can fully appreciate. But we are ideally entering a moment where Monumental Sports has to think a bit harder about how to get fans in seats at Wizards games. People have been hungry to root for the local football team again. The Wizards live rent free in my head and even I am excited about this sale.
Players can get traded, coach’s contracts expire, but the cost sharing and general profitability of any given NBA team means that accountability at an ownership level largely doesn’t exist. At worst, they end up like Snyder or the LA Clippers former owner Donald Sterling and sell at a huge profit. For the ownership class, money talks and Josh Harris just entered the DC chat. Let’s hope the casual fan and diehards alike are the ones who benefit.