Background and career
Theodore John Leonsis (born January 8, 1957) is an American billionaire businessman and sports team owner. He is a former senior executive with America Online (AOL) and the founder, chairman, and CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NHL's Washington Capitals, the NBA's Washington Wizards, the WNBA's Washington Mystics, and Monumental Sports Network. Leonsis graduated from Georgetown University in 1977. He has served on the board of directors at Georgetown University and also served a brief tenure as the mayor of Orchid, Florida. As of 2026, he held a net worth of $3.9 billion.
Leonsis was born on January 8, 1957, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City to a family of working-class Greek immigrant grandparents, who were mill workers, and parents who worked as a waiter and a secretary. When his high school guidance counselor evaluated his skill set, the counselor concluded that young Ted was destined to work in a grocery store. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School, before moving to Lowell, Massachusetts, where he graduated from Lowell High School in 1973. He was first in his family to go to a university, where he attended Georgetown University to pursue his undergraduate studies majoring in American Studies, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class.
After graduating from college, he moved back to his parents' home in Lowell and began working for Wang Laboratories as a corporate communications manager and Harris Corp. as a marketing executive. Leonsis left Harris Corporation in March 1981. He started LIST, a magazine focused on personal computing. He raised $1 million in seed capital with his partner Vincent Pica. The first issue of the magazine was published in 1982. Two years later, he sold the company to Thomson Reuters for $40 million, netting him $20 million.
In 1988, Leonsis established the PR company Redgate Communications Corporation. When the organization was acquired by America Online (AOL) in 1994, Leonsis began working with AOL as a senior executive, remaining with the company for 13 years. He held numerous positions at AOL before retiring in 2006 as the audience group's president and vice-chairman.
Leonsis is the founder, managing partner, chairman and CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NHL's Washington Capitals, NBA's Washington Wizards, NBA G League's Capital City Go-Go, WNBA's Washington Mystics, and formerly the AFL's Washington Valor and Baltimore Brigade. Monumental Sports owns Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., and manages the MedStar Capitals Iceplex and George Mason University's EagleBank Arena.
In 2023, Leonsis threatened to move the Washington Wizards and Capitals from the District of Columbia unless the city provided $600 million in public funding for a major renovation of Capital One Arena. Mayor Muriel Bowser offered $500 million towards the proposed $800 million project to modernize the aging downtown arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals. In December 2023, Leonsis and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin announced that Virginia would offer more than $1.35 billion in taxpayer money to build a new venue for the Capitals and Wizards in Alexandria, Virginia, marking the largest public subsidy for such a project. When Virginia's legislation for a stadium authority was not approved, Leonsis and Mayor Bowser reached an agreement to keep the teams at Capital One Arena. If the Youngkin-Leonsis deal had not been rejected by lawmakers, it would have the largest public stadium subsidy of its kind. In December 2024, the D.C. Council approved an agreement with Monumental Sports to renovate Capital One Arena. Construction began in 2025 and is expected to be completed by 2027.
