This post was written by Hatchet reporter Amy Sechrist
The owner of the Washington Nationals reflected on his professional and personal relationship with baseball at the Sports Industry and Networking Conference hosted Friday by the GW School of Business.
Mark Lerner, a business school alumnus and the keynote speaker at the event, told a full crowd in the Jack Morton Auditorium about the savvy business decisions that supported the team’s sharp rise in success on the field.
The D.C. native and real estate mogul purchased the team in 2006, a move Lerner attributed to his lifelong love of baseball. He and his father Ted, another principal owner, were determined to bring winning baseball back after the District was left without a team in 1971.
“I always believed that the national pastime should have a special home here in the nation’s capital,” Lerner said.
The Lerner family has also poured more money into a team that had been maligned as one of the league’s poorest. The Nationals’ nearly $140 million payroll next season will be one of the highest in Major League Baseball.
In addition to his job as vice chairman and principal owner of the Nationals, Lerner is a principal of the largest private real estate developer in the D.C. area.
Lerner leveraged those real estate smarts to steer the completion of National Park in 2008, which has now helped revitalize the waterfront district. In their new ballpark, the Nationals became the first D.C. to make the postseason in 79 years last fall.
“All those years at Lerner has given me the practical knowledge necessary to build a ballpark from the ground up and help me understand that all good things are built on a solid foundation,” said Lerner.
Lerner said he never dreamed his family would one day own a ballpark, but he brought his business background to baseball by using his real estate motto: “The customer is number one,” he said.
“Today after almost six years of ownership I still get chills when I step out into the field. We have a world class ballpark at Nationals Park and a team that I believe is on its way to greatness,” Lerner said.
Lerner’s address is one part of the two-day event that is one of the leading sports career conferences in the industry.
After the address Lerner answered several questions from the crowd and imparted some advice to young sports professionals looking to get their break in a highly competitive business.
“If it’s your dream just keep fighting for it, because at the end of the day that’s what it takes. You just got to keep banging doors down,” Lerner said.
