Virginia is for Wizards and Capitals

While you were looking up Giants QB Tommy DeVito’s agent and thinking, “That man has style,” a regional sports shake-up was in the works.

Yesterday, Ted Leonsis, owner of the NBA’s Wizards and the NHL’s Capitals, announced a deal to move both teams from downtown Washington, DC, across state lines to Alexandria, VA (though no official documents have been signed). The move is a huge win for Virginia—the most populous state without any big league sports teams—where the two teams could play at the heart of a proposed $2 billion, 12-acre entertainment complex as soon as 2028.

But it’s a huge bummer for the nation’s capital. Washington, DC, has one of the highest rates of people working remotely in the US, and its once-buzzing downtown is still struggling to recover post-Covid. Now DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, who made a last-minute offer to Leonsis on Tuesday night to keep the teams in town, faces the potential loss of two major fanbases and a sports hub in the city’s Chinatown area.

A new trend in stadiums

Leonsis’s plan for Virginia places him among other billionaire franchise owners who want to build massive entertainment complexes near their teams to capitalize on the synergy between sporting events and other nightlife and entertainment. The big prize that some other franchise owners are chasing is a casino.

• Earlier this month, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban came one step closer to his dream of building a new Mavs arena in the middle of a resort and casino after he struck a deal to sell his majority stake in the team to casino mogul Miriam Adelson.
• In November, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, along with Hard Rock International, proposed an $8 billion entertainment complex and casino to be built next to Citi Field.

Meanwhile…in Oklahoma City, 7-foot-tall men aren’t going anywhere. Voters in OKC approved an old-fashioned 1% sales tax for the next six years to fund the construction of a new downtown arena for the OKC Thunder. Under the agreement, the team will stay through 2050.