Commanders owner Josh Harris speaks out about his plans after three months in charge

Editor’s note: This article was written by Ben Fischer and first appeared in Sports Business Journal, the industry’s leading source of sports business news, events and data.

For new Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, his $6 billion turnaround project requires a two-track approach: One for the many immediate issues, and one for the significant long-term strategic challenges.

On the short-term front, he’s already booked a lot of big wins: Vastly improved attendance, a return of key sponsors and a surge of interest from three different governments in developing a new stadium. But that’s table stakes — the things that should be happening at any NFL club. For Harris, whose purchase of the club for an NFL-record $6.05 billion closed in July, the immediate wins only underscore the importance of the big picture.

“The city’s responding, but to be fair, it’s responding off a low base,” Harris said during an interview with Sports Business Journal near his three-month milestone as owner. “In order to keep it going, we need to up our game pretty much every step of the way.”

So far, Harris has retained his inherited executive team, including team President Jason Wright, and made no structural changes to the business side. He wouldn’t commit to keeping it that way, but said he was pleased with the leadership team and workforce so far — especially considering the increased difficulty caused by the better attendance. FedEx has averaged a crowd of 64,237 through three home games this year, up 6,131 fans from 2022, when the team was last in per-game attendance.

Harris did foreshadow personnel changes, saying, “Not everyone’s going to make it. But at the same time, I found a very earnest, hardworking group of people that really want to rise to the challenge. Right now, we’re trying to really support everyone but also raise expectations and hold people accountable. So we’ll have to see where it ends up. But right now, it’s all been working great.”

For the first time, Harris detailed exactly how executives at Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment and his own investment firm, 26North Partners, are involved in the Commanders’ operations.

Harris and 26North are effectively treating the Commanders as a portfolio company, with partner Evan Zemsky leading a group that ensures strategic alignment between the football team and the firm, while providing advice on key issues.

“The Commanders are very important to my family and therefore the resources that I have here, which are substantial, I’m taking a bunch of those resources and saying, ‘focus on this,’” Harris said.

He described a similar approach with HBSE, which, he noted, is “effectively, in a very complicated way, an investor through me” in the Commanders. While the football team is not part of HBSE — and its $6 billion asset value is larger than the 76ers, Devils, Prudential Center and the rest of HBSE combined — there are synergies to be gained by having CEO Tad Brown work closely with Commanders leaders. For instance, Wright recently toured Prudential Center for a perspective on how that 16-year-old venue has been refreshed — a primer for further upgrades at declining, 26-year-old FedEx Field.

“So there’s sort of that 26North sponsor role, and then there’s the mutually symbiotic relationship between two affiliated sports businesses that are in the same area that can help both,” Harris said.

Since he acquired the Commanders, there have been ongoing meetings to strategize a future where Harris, either directly or through HBSE, owns two major arenas, a major stadium and three teams within 240 miles. (HBSE is also working to develop a new arena in Philadelphia, with hopes of moving the 76ers out of its tenancy at Wells Fargo Center.) “So we’ll have a huge franchise for events and concerts,” he said.

One area of focus for 26North has been premium sales, which generated a quick return: The Commanders sold the suites that Wright had been using for his executive team. “I’ve never been so happy to be evicted in my life,” Wright said.

There’s little tension between the short-term work and the long-term work, Harris and Wright say. While there are limits to the investment and effort they might put into FedEx Field knowing that a full-on replacement is coming as soon as possible once their commitment to play at FedEx expires in 2027, that tension would keep him from investing “hundreds of millions,” not the “10, 20, 30 or 40 million” dollars worth of work already underway, Harris said. And mostly, the work ongoing now can inform future stadium planning while generating an immediate return.

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With the stadium, Wright and Harris talk about how the little things add up to the big picture. Sustaining the honeymoon associated with a new owner depends on delivering for fans when they come back — better, bigger premium spaces, better and faster concessions, no more leaks from overhangs, upgraded mobile connectivity and better traffic flows around the stadium.

All of that (and some wins on the field), Wright said, leads to better season-ticket renewals, which, he hopes, will get the team back to the proper major-market NFL team baseline for revenue. Forbes magazine recently pegged the Commanders’ 2022 revenue at $545 million, tied for 16th. Harris said his goal is to become a “top five” team in all metrics; on that same list, the Giants were fifth at $639 million.

“After next offseason, we’ll be in a healthier spot,” said Wright, who talks with Harris every day. “I don’t think we’ll quite be where we want to be in the future, but we’ll be in a very healthy spot, that changes what you decide to invest in. Between now and then, the incremental improvements on guest experience have very direct ROI back to the season-ticket members.”

The Commanders are spending what Harris called “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on consultants and preliminary plans as they think about their stadium options right now. Since August, former Atlanta Hawks COO Thad Sheely has been leading this work as a stadium adviser, and meets with Wright three times a week. The team’s official construction partner, Clark Construction, is also closely involved in the strategizing.

It’s complex work. Every economic and construction detail of a possible new development depends on the particulars of a given plot of land, but no site can be confirmed before an inherently unpredictable political process plays out. But nobody, especially not Harris, is comfortable waiting for the political process before digging into details. The solution: “In a way you do triple the work up front,” Wright said.

While almost nothing is known about what the Harris-era Commanders want internally, the most commonly speculated possibilities include rebuilding at the FedEx site in Landover, Md., returning to the classic RFK Stadium site in D.C. (though that is uniquely politically difficult), or a new site somewhere in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

The stadium issue, while critical strategically, is not so immediate that it’s coloring business deals today. Sponsorships signed today do not include contingencies for a new venue, Wright said. The Verizon sponsorship includes upgraded equipment at FedEx, but much of that equipment could be moved to a new venue. But there is a handshake understanding about the value of coming back now, before the glitzy new venue.

“We’re going to really appreciate and remember the people that are there early, and there’s loyalty, right?” Harris said.

Harris said his work week has increased from 60 hours to 90 hours upon buying the Commanders, and he hopes that intensity will subside with time. But it’s not there yet, with him learning along the way and Commanders employees learning how Harris works, too.

“I’m hoping that over time, as people understand my cadence and expectations, that it’ll get a lot easier, but I think it’s natural that it’s not there yet three months after we start,” he said.