Ted Leonsis explains why he is is taking the Wizards to Virginia

_{^{The owner of Monumental Sports Ted Leonsis has finally broken silence provided more details on his decision to move his Washington D.C. based sport teams out of Capitol One Arena in DC over the river to Virginia.}}

_{^{In a sit down interview with Christian Flores from ABC 7, Leonsis explained the economics behind his final decision:}}

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_{^{“The mayor has been a great, great partner. In sharing empathy, Virginia is a state. It's got 9 million people. It has a huge budget. Maryland is a state, and it has a huge budget, 7 million people. D.C. has 600,000 people and a much smaller budget. I think the mayor accorded herself really, really well. I'd like to remind you we're the only organization that isn't beholden to a city, to a state. We've never received any money. I've never gotten money from the city for Capital One Arena. I own it. I pay the mortgage. I pay the taxes. In fact, when Nationals Park was stood up and built, the city did a tax on every business in the city, including mine. I pay a tax every year to the city just for the stadium fund. Then they said to the Nationals, 'You have to pay us 10 % in ticket tax.' We were paying 5.5 %. The city came to us and said, 'You now have to pay a 10 % tax.' They raised the tax to us to 10 %. I couldn't pass that on to our customers. We, in a way, have been paying a piece of what the city has to do to support Nationals Park. That's what you do when you're in business here. I don't think the mayor has done anything wrong. The $500 million offer, the city should go and pass it. That would be a great thing for the city to do. I don't have any details on what the bill is, how they are paying it back. Are they raising taxes? Are they taxing anybody? You have to wait to see the final bill. I know what the bill will be in Virginia. I'm paying it. All we're doing is using the stadium authority we created, and they're going to create a bond. We will pay what the interest on the bond is. Because they're a huge, very successful state, their interest rate is much lower. That's how this deal becomes economically viable for everyone. If you're a commercial real estate developer and someone like me is in business, and you go to the bank today, you have to put down a big down payment, and maybe you'll pay 7 %, 8 %, could be if they don't like your balance sheet and income statement it could be 10 %. Let's just say it's 8 %. If you use someone else's balance sheet and are paying them back, they might get it at 3 %. The difference between 3 % and 8 %, that 5 % spread, on $2 billion or $1 billion is significant dollars. You wouldn't be able to do it if you were paying the 8 %. That's how companies get in trouble. We have the cleanest balance sheet of any of the sports organizations. We have the least amount of debt and the most revenue - the Commanders, Nationals, Orioles, Ravens. We run a really, really good business that's very under-leveraged. This is a deal that's very, very affordable with very little risk.”}}

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