Monumental’s $800 million-plus renovation could position Washington for marquee weekends, but the company’s CEO warns fans the leagues control the tickets.

Ted Leonsis has never hidden his skepticism about the glamour of hosting an All-Star Game, often noting that the leagues, not the home teams, run the show and divvy up the best seats.

But with a sweeping, multiyear renovation of Capital One Arena underway in D.C., the owner and chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment says Washington is ready to raise its hand again for the NBA and NHL’s marquee midseason showcases.

“When our building is up and functioning, I would hope we’d be considered for an NBA All-Star Game,” Leonsis told WTOP. “The NHL All-Star Game … we’d love to be able to host it.”

The Capitals have hosted the NHL All-Star Game only once — in 1982 in Landover, Maryland. The Wizards last hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 2001 in D.C.

Leonsis said bringing the WNBA All-Star Game back for the first time since 2007 is also on his radar.

Leagues rarely spell out a formula for choosing host cities, but new arenas and major renovations typically help push a market to the front of the line.

With more than $800 million in upgrades planned at the Downtown arena, the Capitals, Wizards and Mystics fit that profile. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman toured the site this past season and saw the work firsthand.

“Ted took me on a tour of what’s been done and what’s being planned,” Bettman said in January. “What’s going on here is nothing short of spectacular. And sharing our tent-pole events, our special events with the fans in Washington, with the Capitals, the organization, is always on the table.”

The renovation is expected to wrap ahead of the 2027-28 season, meaning any All-Star bid could still be years away.

Capital One Arena is scheduled to close this summer as work continues. Phase two focuses on new and relocated entrances and a reimagined exterior; that portion is expected to be completed in September 2026, with additional exterior work continuing into 2027.

“Then, we’ll be done and we’ll have a pristine, beautiful, great new experience,” Leonsis said. “And then we can start to bid, and I’ll put my hand up for both of those games.”

CEO Ted Leonsis talks with WTOP’s Ben Raby about his desire to bring an All-Star game to D.C.

Leonsis floated 2031 as an intriguing target for the NBA, the 30th anniversary of the last All-Star Game in Washington.

Still, he said fans should understand what comes with it: The league controls the event and much of the inventory.

“I just have to give the fair warning: It’s not our event. It’s the league’s event, and they are catering to the sponsors,” Leonsis said. “Anybody who has held an All-Star Game always ends up with the hard feelings, ‘I’ve been a season-ticket holder for X years, why can’t I sit in my seats?’ Well, I don’t own the building during the All-Star Game. I don’t own the suites. They give them to all 30 teams.”

He laughed at the memory of learning that lesson during the 2001 NBA All-Star weekend in Washington, when he was an AOL executive with company-held courtside season tickets.

“We were expecting at the All-Star Game that we’d have our same tickets,” he said. “Instead, we were moved to the front row upstairs. The league owns the tickets and the inventory, and they are distributing them as they see best.”

If expectations are clear, Leonsis said the region has plenty of reasons to pursue the events — from national exposure to a surge in visitors.

Like the boost local leaders expect from the NFL draft coming to Washington next April, an All-Star weekend can deliver a significant economic jolt for hotels, restaurants and transit.

Forbes reported the 2024 NHL All-Star Game had a $50-$60 million economic impact on Toronto. The 2025 NBA All-Star Game generated $429 million in total event value for the San Francisco Bay Area economy, according to Temple University’s Sports Industry Research Center.

“I think it’s the right thing for the city and the right thing for our team to show off the new building once it reopens,” Leonsis said. “We’ll put our hand up when the time is right.”

More women’s hockey in DC?

Beyond the All-Star talk, there is also buzz around whether Washington could land a women’s professional hockey team.

Leonsis has long touted the growth of women’s sports and owns the WNBA’s Washington Mystics through Monumental.

“We should be the women’s professional sports capital of the world,” Leonsis said. “We want to play that part and be in that role as a leader and innovator.”

WTOP’s Ben Raby asks Ted Leonsis about the PWHL buzz in D.C.

He said he has closely monitored the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which launched in 2024 and has discussed expansion publicly.

This past winter, Monumental hosted a neutral-site game between the Montreal Victoire and the New York Sirens as part of the PWHL’s Takeover Tour. The game drew a record 17,228 fans to Capital One Arena at the time, the largest U.S. crowd to watch a women’s hockey game and chant a loud refrain of “we want a team.”

Leonsis said the interest is real, but timing matters.

“We have a couple more years of renovations, so it’s very difficult right now to speak with certainty about expansion and what they’re doing along our timetable,” he said.

After the Takeover Tour stop, Leonsis said he spoke with PWHL executive Stan Kasten about ways to bring more women’s hockey to the District.

“Stan and I did talk about, ‘Hey, this went very well,’ We enjoyed it, they enjoyed it, the players enjoyed it,” Leonsis said. “We should maybe do two games next year, or three games the season after that. We should start to get into a rhythm.”

A full-time team, Leonsis noted, could depend on how the league structures ownership. The PWHL currently operates as a single entity, with teams owned and operated by the Mark Walter Group.

Sources told WTOP the league could eventually move away from that model, though no timetable has been set and nothing is imminent. The single-entity approach has been framed by the league as a conservative way to build a foundation for long-term success.

“Given the success of this January’s game in D.C., Monumental has interest in hosting future neutral-site PWHL games and is open to exploring opportunities to bring a team to Washington, D.C., if there were flexibility in the ownership structure,” a Monumental spokesperson said in an email.

“We certainly want to stay close with them,” Leonsis said. “My expectation is that we’ll be a big part of the overall women’s professional sports landscape.”

Museum-like art, memorabilia displays at Capital One Arena

Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment

10, 10, 10

Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment

Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment

Courtesy Monumental Sports & Entertainment

Among the additions at the revamped arena that Leonsis said he’s most looking forward to will be the District Arts Collection — a multimillion dollar curated art and memorabilia collection which will by displayed throughout the arena.

Benefiting from its partnership with cllct — a premier collectible media and marketing services company — Monumental Sports is in the process of gathering historic artifacts that will eventually be displayed for fans to peruse on all levels of the building. The exhibits will include both sports and Americana memorabilia.

“We want to have a museum, we want to have more interactivity through the arena,” Leonsis said.

The issue Monumental has run into when trying to gather memorabilia from their own teams is that very little has actually been preserved by the clubs themselves. It’s a common oversight by many professional franchises, which cllct is working to correct on the fly.

“It’s strange because in some sense, it’s the only part of teams that are worth billions of dollars that isn’t professionalized, because it was never anyone’s job to do it,” said Darren Rovell, the founder of cllct.

Ted Leonsis tells WTOP’s Ben Raby about the exhibit at Capital One.

Leonsis said that when Monumental began its quest to build museum-like exhibits, he figured it would naturally include items from Michael Jordan’s playing days with the Wizards. He soon found out, though, they didn’t have much in-house.

“We had to hire Darren to go into market to get people to sell us Michael Jordan autographed basketballs, Michael Jordan autographed home and away jerseys,” Leonsis said.

“What we’ve been doing now is trying to be very bespoke on our history. Who were the best players? What did they wear their rookie year? What did they wear the year they retired? What did they wear when they scored their 100th goal? We want to build and amass that type of collection and be able to tell the story in a more interactive, lived way,” he added.

Monumental partnered with Rovell in 2025 with the goal of having museum-like installations in place by fall 2027. Rovell is in constant contact with former players about lending pieces and has also identified a handful of big-time collectors of Capitals and Wizards memorabilia, who are planning to contribute to the arena’s collection.

The original goal structures and nets from Alex Ovechkin’s record-tying and record-breaking 894th and 895th goals have already been obtained and will be among the displays.

“Those goal structures are just not pieces of metal,” Rovell said. “They signify so much.”

Rovell said from his experience that game-used memorabilia can draw in even casual fans, who may remember a special date or game from their own memory bank.

“Game-used is really like the emotion,” Rovell said. “That’s what connects you to the moment. We’re also going to (showcase) it in a display that is meaningful. I think sometimes you have game-used stuff that is not displayed in a way that it deserves. This is museum quality stuff and so giving it the gravitas that it deserves, I think, is going to be a mark of the new Capital One Arena.”

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