Laurene Powell Jobs Selling 10% Stake in Wizards, Capitals Parent
Billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs is looking to sell a chunk of her stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the parent of the NBA’s Wizards and NHL’s Capitals, according to multiple people familiar with the plans.
The founder of Emerson Collective, Powell Jobs is in early talks to sell about 10%, roughly half of her full holdings, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the details are private. She is the largest Monumental shareholder outside of managing partner Ted Leonsis.
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The talks are still in their nascent stages, the sources said. It’s unclear who might become a formal bidder, and too early to know how Monumental might be valued in a potential transaction. Sportico values the Wizards at $3.33 billion and the Capitals at $1.42 billion. A smaller minority stake in the full company sold last year at $4.05 billion valuation.
Representatives for Monumental, Emerson Collective, and CAA Evolution, which is handling the sale, declined to comment.
Monumental extends far beyond the NBA and NHL teams. The company owns the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, Capital One Arena, Monumental Sports Washington (which is both an RSN and streaming service), esports organization Team Liquid, the Wizards’ G League team and a handful of other assets. It is structured in the mold of modern sports ownership—a handful of prominent franchises at the center of a wider media, real estate and technology portfolio—and Leonsis has big plans.
“Our goal is to build the world’s most valuable sports and entertainment company,” he said at Sportico‘s Invest in Sports event in October.
Powell Jobs’ sale comes at a busy time for Monumental. Last June, the group became the first major U.S. sports franchise to take investment from a foreign sovereign wealth fund. The Qatar Investment Authority purchased 5% of Monumental at that $4.05 billion valuation.
A few months later, Leonsis announced plans for a new arena and entertainment district outside D.C. in the Potomac Yards district of Alexandria, Va. The proposal, a public-private partnership between the city, state, Monumental and a developer, still needs legislative approval.
Powell Jobs bought into Monumental in 2017, buying a roughly 20% stake in the enterprise. She was previously part of a group that unsuccessfully bid on the Los Angeles Clippers when the NBA team was sold in 2014, and she participated in the WNBA’s 2022 capital raise.
She is worth about $13.3 billion, according to Forbes, a fortune that includes significant shares in Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) from her late husband, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011. Powell Jobs bought The Atlantic in 2017 and has invested in a number of other media companies and philanthropic efforts.
In addition to Powell Jobs and QIA, Monumental’s minority investors include billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson, and Washington Nationals owner Mark Lerner.
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