Why Ted Leonsis runs Monumental Sports as if it's pre-IPO

Ted Leonsis, CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment — the company that owns the NHL's Washington Capitals, the NBA's Washington Wizards, and the WNBA's Washington Mystics — tells Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi that an initial public offering (IPO) isn't the "endgame," but he is operating the company as if it's in a pre-IPO stage.

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00:00 Speaker A

Given the valuations we've seen, I mean the Lakers fetching around a $10 billion valuation, valuations up across the board for sports teams, is your endgame an IPO and an IPO within the next 24 months?

00:08 Speaker B

Um, it's not an endgame, but I I am operating our company and I think some other, if you will, central companies like us as if we're a pre- IPO company. We have to make sure that, um, once you bring in big investors,

00:23 Speaker B

uh be a sovereign wealth fund, be it a private equity fund, that you're going to have to have some kind of preparation to get people liquidity, get investors liquidity. And we're a we're an interesting industry in that we would have strong retail following, um fans of the team itself and you would also have strong institutional coverage because we're like a SAS business, 70-75% of our revenues is repeatable.

00:48 Speaker B

We look like salesforce.com or Oracle if you really drill down into our business model, where we have 3%, 4%, 5% escalators every year. We have long-term 10, 15-year contracts with our big, um, big partners. And so these are very, very um, important strong businesses, but to date, there's very few public companies and the ones that have gone public are undervalued.

01:14 Speaker B

And so we we have to right size and retrain Wall Street and retrain who's going to cover us, uh because like the Knicks and the Rangers and MSG or public company, it's built into four separate companies. It's way undervalued.

01:29 Speaker B

Same with um John Malone's Liberty Media. It's a confusing tracking stocks and the like. and I think over time we'll have some pure play sports tech companies like ours that are understood and valued appropriately and they'll be valued on their top line growth, on their cash flow, on their EDA, but we will look like a salesforce.com or a Oracle.

01:57 Speaker B

And when we get those kinds of multiples, like yes, I I would be interested in taking the company public for the benefit of our our partners, our fans and give everyone the opportunity to share in the value creation that sports and technology are driving.