Monumental Sports Network, owned by Ted Leonsis, said it launched a direct-to-consumer subscription service that will let fans who aren’t pay TV subscribers watch the games of Washington, D.C.’s basketball and hockey teams for $19.99 a month.

Viewers can also pay $199.99 a year to watch the Capitals, Wizards and Mystics play via the Monumental Sports Network app, which is available on iOS, Android, Apple TV and Roku. Subscribers can also use the app on Amazon Fire TV, Monumental said.

With pay TV and regional sports networks losing subscribers to cord-cutting, Monumental becomes the latest sports rights holder to make games available via streaming.

“We are delighted to make our network more accessible to fans without a Pay TV subscription by launching direct-to-consumer memberships,” Zach Leonsis, president of Media & New Enterprises at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, said. “Distributing our programming in new and additional ways is critical to our strategy of building the best local media platform in sports.” 

Viewers who currently access Monumental Sports Network through a pay TV provider will continue to be able to watch the channel and can use the digital platform with no additional fees.

The app — created with ViewLift, another Leonsis backed company — fans with new and enhanced video functionality for live streaming of games, on-demand viewing of original programming and game replays and exclusive behind-the-scenes content.

Users who already had the previous Monumental Sports Network app downloaded on their digital devices will receive a new version of the app via a standard app update. 

Monumental said the first 10,000 subscribers to the network’s new Annual Membership will receive an exclusive, limited-edition bobblehead set of three featuring Alex Ovechkin, Kyle Kuzma, and Elena Delle Donne. Each bobblehead includes a built-in audio feature that plays signature game calls from Monumental play-by-play announcers.

“We are excited to have built the Monumental Sports Network apps to enable fans of the Capitals, Wizards, and Mystics to watch all the live action and VOD content on desktop, mobile, tablet, and both Apple TV and Fire TV — with more platforms to come,” ViewLift CEO Rick Allen said. “Sports fans in the D.C. region are some of the most technologically sophisticated anywhere, and these Monumental streaming services continue the company's leadership in super-serving that fanbase. We've been Monumental's streaming partner for eight years and are particularly proud of this latest version of the Monumental Sports Network.”

Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which acquired NBC Sports Washington last year, has rebranded the regional sports Network as Monumental Sports Network, which will feature both a linear television channel and a digital streaming platform.

The linear channel, home to Monumental’s teams including the Washington Wizards of the NBA and Washington Capitals of the NHL, remains on the same channel numbers where NBC Sports Washington could be found by pay TV subscribers, effective Tuesday.

The new digital platform provides fans with enhanced video functionality for live-streaming of games with authentication of their pay TV credentials, on-demand viewing of original programming and game replay and exclusive behind-the-scenes content.

“Since acquiring NBC Sports Washington one year ago to the day, we have spent every day since building what we believe will be the best local media experience for the greatest fans in all of sports,” said Zach Leonsis, president of media & new enterprises at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, son of company owner Ted Leonsis. “Our fans deserve the best experience possible, so we challenged ourselves to push every standard and deliver an extraordinary media platform. We’re excited to begin the network’s transformation this month with additional plans to unveil several significant upgrades throughout the course of the Capitals and Wizards regular seasons.”

The new digital platform was developed by ViewLift, another Leonsis-backed company.

Digital users will get:

• Access to multiple camera angles during live games with additional functionality including the ability to rewind and watch in slow motion.
• Personalization features that tailor a user’s experience towards their favorite teams and players.
• Access to hundreds of hours of original behind-the-scenes programming and new shows.
• The ability to watch Monumental Sports Network’s live, 24/7 linear feed on-the-go on multiple devices.· 
• Opt-in ability to receive score alerts, team and player updates, as well as a new Monumental Sports Network newsletter.· 
• Daily editorial and video clips covering the Capitals, Wizards, Mystics, and Go-Go which can be saved to a user’s list for later viewing. 
• Sportradar integrations providing users with advanced, real-time sports data and betting analytics.· 
• Ticketmaster integration for ticket management and account linking.· 
• Pay TV subscribers can receive all these features at no additional cost by signing in with their TV Everywhere (TVE) credentials.
• On TV, viewers will see a new logo, look and programming.

New programming includes Hometown with Rachel Nichols, formerly with ESPN, which will appear Thursdays at 7 p.m. starting in October. An initial episode will appear September 20 at 10 p.m. and feature Ted and Zach Leonsis.

Also in the channel’s new lineup are Hershey Bears: Sweeter by the Dozen, about the American Hockey League 2023 champions; Caps Red Line, a weekly series with behind-the-scenes and off-ice stories about the Capitals; Beyond the Buzzer, with off-the-court stories about the Wizards; By the Book, a sport betting series produced with Caesars Sportsbook; District Countdown, featuring historic Capitals and Wizards moments and Beltway Football, which airs during the season and looks at the Commanders and other football activity in the capital area.

The network launch will be promoted with its first paid ad campaign, with print, online and out-of-home ads in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia region.

Monumental Sports Network is also building a new production facility and broadcast studio, set to be online by early 2024 It is located next to Capital One Arena. The two-story, SMPTE 2110 facility will feature two studios which can also combine on non-conflict nights to create a single telecast. The facility will also feature two insert studios and five control rooms to produce multiple events simultaneously.

Monumental Sports Network plans to upgrade its video quality from 1080i to 1080p. The new facility is also built to upgrade its video quality to 4K in the future. In addition, Monumental Sports Network will plan to pursue its alternate telecast strategy upon the opening of the new facility.

“While the local media ecosystem continues to evolve, we seek to build the exemplar local media platform in all of sports. The value of live sports rights continues to grow, which is why we are so confident in making these significant investments back into our local rights,” Leonsis said. “We will do more with our live rights than ever before, upgrading the existing live experience, and producing more programming to the benefit of our fans and business partners. We look forward to debuting many more additional upgrades and enhancements throughout the NBA and NHL regular seasons.”

A powerful player on the D.C. sports scene, Monumental Sports Network, is giving a big boost to eSports by investing in coverage of the budding competitions on top of its pro-sports teams, the National Basketball Association’s Washington Wizards and the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals.

The effort, led by Zach Leonsis, senior vice president and general manager of Washington’s Monumental Sports Network, and Grant Paranjape, MSE’s new director of eSports business and team operations, is hoping to tap into a cord-cutting audience that’s consuming more content over-the-top. They don’t see online offerings replacing regional sports networks soon, but hope to grow the pie with the eyeballs now glued to online gaming platform Twitch.com as they follow seven-figure competitions.

So far, that business includes a stake in champion gamers Team Liquid and a new NBA eSports team coming online next year. Team Liquid is 2017’s leading eSports money winner by far, with more than $12 million in winnings according to website esportsearnings.com.

eSports competitors are hardly couch potatoes mainlining soft drinks, Leonsis and Paranjape argue, saying players have curfews and nutritionists to help maintain those “twitch” reflexes.

The executives spoke with Multichannel News Washington bureau chief John Eggerton about the future of eSports and why they think it will be a force in sports video. Following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

MCN: Zach, on an eSports panel titled “Why the Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” you talked about the next generation cutting the cord. Is eSports an over-the-top hedge play?
Zach Leonsis: I wouldn’t say it’s an OTT hedge play. I would say that eSports is the greatest first example of a live sports-entertainment category whose primary channels live on digital OTT streaming, with cable as the secondary channel. Audiences are used to cable being the primary distribution source and digital being the complementary channel and I think eSports is a sign of more content opportunities to come. I think I also said on that panel that eSports is a great opportunity for us to reach a brand new type of fan that doesn’t always cross over to the ones we have here at Monumental Sports & Entertainment. They have different categories than your core hockey or basketball fan, and we like that. We like diversity of audience.

Grant Paranjape: As someone who has never owned a cable package, I’m an example of that. But I have probably watched many thousands of hours of eSports on different live streams. It is a great way to bridge the gap between fans of traditional sports and fans of eSports.

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MCN: Talk about NBA 2K and when it will be launching.
ZL: The NBA and [video-game manufacturer] 2K have launched a joint venture and announced several months ago that they are launching the NBA 2K league. They went to the teams and later announced that there were 17 franchises that had raised their hands to have the very first franchises in the league [including Monumental’s Wizards]. So, the league will look to launch in late spring 2018 and we’re happy to have installed our director of eSports in Grant. We’re one of the first teams in the NBA to install someone fully dedicated to the eSports team. That gives us a great head start on getting everything ready, from setting up a gaming house, to training facilities, to sharing that new opportunity with our partners. Grant has great experience from a team called Splice that competes across a variety of endemic eSports titles. He brings insights and knowledge to our organization that we previously lacked.

MCN: Will the NBA team be branded as the Wizards?
GP: The NBA hasn’t announced the team names. That is something coming a little later but it will definitely be associated with the brand we’ve built.

MCN: How controllable is this environment from a branding perspective? There has been talk about drug use, for instance, and this is not going to be a training camp with curfews, is it?
GP: I would say in terms of player behavior, it is pretty strictly controlled. It is very similar to what you would see in a traditional sports league. The players sign some pretty strict contracts prohibiting drug use and there is a team manager who will ensure the players have strict curfews and a nutritionist to make sure they have the proper diet. It is a pretty controlled environment that does kind of keep these players at peak performance, the same as any other traditional athlete.

ZL: I would say that a lot of them hold each other accountable as well. In a lot of these titles there’s a lot of money on the line. Our franchise, Team Liquid, won TI7 [the 2017 International Dota 2 Championships] a couple of weekends ago and a first place prize of nearly $1 million. These players are practicing in many cases 10, 12, even 14 hours a day, or more, and so they have to be ready and in good physical condition. These guys are working out and eating well to hone their “twitch” reflexes [reaction time] and so their minds can be focused on the task at hand. There is just too much money on the line for them not to be prepared and totally committed.

MCN: Do you see streaming rights to eSports being a moneymaker?
ZL: Absolutely. [Live game streaming site] Twitch highly values the streaming rights from many teams from the perspective of either using the games to keep highly engaged users more involved or to sell advertising or emotes, and other freemium type business strategies. Twitch sold for a significant valuation to Amazon [almost $1 billion in 2014]. They have really feasted on growing the eSports gaming community. Players sign individual deals that are quite lucrative around streaming rights, so it’s very valuable for teams and players alike.

GP: Especially as more platforms are getting involved and competing for those rights. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — it’s only going to get more competitive to acquire those top-tier rights.

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MCN: Do you ever see a time when all sports have migrated to over-the-top rather than broadcast or cable, given how video delivery is going?
ZL: We really see a future where linear cable networks and over-the-top direct-to-consumer platforms live in a symbiotic ecosystem and I think that is really how we tried to fashion our local media rights deal with CSN Mid-Atlantic, which is one of the regional sports networks in the NBC Sports family. [CSN Mid-Atlantic will be rebranded as NBC Sports Washington on Oct. 2.] We have a minority equity position in the channel and we’ve committed our Capitals and Wizards live game rights for the long-term onto that channel.

So, the local core RSN business is still strong. Even though cable is starting to decay, or at least plateau, RSNs are seeing some of the slowest decay rates of any channels out there because local really matters and people really care about their local sports teams. We’ve launched this over-the-top direct-to consumer platform called Monumental Sports Network, and NBC Sports and CSN Atlantic are minority equity owners in that network as well, so we have these reciprocal minority stakes in each others’ networks and share board representation, and we program all of our other content and games on the over-the-top platform, so, all of our Washington Mystics (WNBA) games, our minor league hockey games, our two arena football league teams, “shoulder” programming and original programming about all our teams, including the Capitals and the Wizards. We have built out high school basketball, football, hockey and baseball platforms, and now we’ve started to add eSports to the mix. There are some things that digital channels can do that are better than linear ones, and there are inherent advantages that linear channels have over digital ones.

MCN: One of the advantages to linear TV is they have an established ratings system. When is Nielsen starting to rate eSports, and how important is it to have that?
ZL: I think one of the key advantages to an over-the-top or digital channel, or rather a direct-to-consumer platform, is that with digital channels you know exactly who is watching, exactly how many people watched, how long they were on the platform, what else they watched. Typically if you can get them to sign in you have first name and last name and potentially more information. And if they are a paid subscriber, you also have purchasing behavior, credit card and billing info. And that is incredibly powerful. That’s information that disintermediated cable networks don’t have access to. That is another reason why we think that digital is so important to our distribution mix.

MCN: Grant, what do you see as your mission statement and how will you measure your success?
GP: Creating brands that are sustainable and creating an eSports division at MSE [Monumental Sports Entertainment] that is also sustainable and profitable. One of the major concerns around eSports is that, for these players, they have one-, two-, three-year careers and then they tend to transition out of those playing roles to either management or coaching. So, we will look to build an infrastructure that sets our players up for success long-term.

MCN: How long before your eSports business will be profitable?
GP: It depends on the title. It could be a long-term play, five to 10 years. Some endemic teams are still not profitable and they have been in business two or three years and are constantly fundraising through venture capital and other means. It is definitely possible that we are profitable year one. That is something that we are going to work really hard with our corporate partnership teams to do.

MCN: Are you in eSports just in case it hits, or are you confident it is the direction of at least one sector of the sports video business?
ZL: Obviously we are believers. We have made a significant investment in Team Liquid. We led the group with [Golden State Warriors co-owner] Peter Guber and [Tampa Bay Lightning owner] Jeff Vinik, NBA and NHL owners, respectively, and we quickly raised our hand to participate in the NBA 2K league, and what better partner to stand up a new eSports organization than the NBA, a semi-regionalized approach and one that allows us to leverage big team brands and big existing social media and digital followings. We just think that eSports is well positioned to do well. We don’t just want to be here to see what happens. We are quite bullish on the future success of eSports and we want to be part of that growth and development.

MCN: Do you eventually see an NFL 2K league or an NHL 2K league?
ZL: It’s unclear. We don’t want to speak on behalf of other leagues. We think that the NBA is a great first-mover in the space and I wouldn’t be surprised if other leagues consider this.

GP:Madden [EA’s Madden NFL Club Championship] is doing something with the 32 NFL teams.

MCN: Washington is a big sports town. Can it be a big eSports town?
ZL: I think so. There is a great viewership base all along the Northeast Corridor. We have not held an eSports event in Washington yet. We would like to one day. We are opening a brand new facility in conjunction with our sports commission in Washington, called Events D.C., and they would really like to position Washington as the capital of eSports. Events D.C. actually sponsors their own endemic team called NRG. We could imagine hosting eSports events in Washington, D.C., in the not-to-distant future.