NFL owners to vote on Washington Commanders sale, Dan Snyder's tenure expected to end
Sometime Thursday, the ownership of the Washington Commanders likely will pass from the controversial Dan Snyder to Josh Harris.
Harris and his ownership group offered $6.05 billion for the 91-year-old NFL franchise. The eight-owner finance committee is set to approve the sale, Thursday. This already appears to be a formality. The Washington Post reported that the finance committee met remotely, Monday, and voted to give the Commanders deal a thumbs up.
The finance committee then is expected to hand off the approval to all 32 NFL owners. Their meeting was supposed to begin at 2 p.m Eastern. It takes 24 teams to vote yes to approve the deal. It’s all going down in a Minneapolis hotel.
The NFL owners definitely are ready to rid themselves of Snyder, who bought the Washington franchise in 1999 for $800 million. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who joined the elite NFL owners club a decade before Snyder, was smiling when he walked into the meeting.
“I think it’s going to a great day for the NFL,” he told reporters.
Snyder signaled Commanders sale last November
Snyder announced last fall that he’d hired a bank to vet a potential sale. Originally, owners believed they could vote on the Commanders as soon as this past March. But it took longer than they all thought.
Snyder accepted Harris’ bid in April. His ownership group competed with Steve Apostolopoulos, a Canadian commercial real estate developer, and Tilman Fertitta, a Houston billionaire who owns the Houston Rockets in the NBA. Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, kicked the tires on a potential Commanders buy. But he didn’t offer a bid.
Harris, who owns the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, put together a group to buy the Denver Broncos last year. But Rob Walton, the heir to the Walmart fortune, secured the Broncos at a then record price of $4.65 billion. Obviously, Harris’ Commanders bid exceeds that.
Harris will have to sell his $140 million share of the Steelers once the Commanders deal goes through. He grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and is a long-time fan of the city’s sports franchises. He’s also a big supporter of wrestling. He made his money in private equity investing and started buying into sports teams a decade ago.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the NFL and those representing Snyder reached an agreement on the remaining legal issues earlier this week. The Washington Post reported that the lingering legal issue was Snyder’s potential involvement in the leak of emails written by former Raiders coach Jon Gruden. When the emails hit the media two years ago, Gruden lost his job. Sources told the Post that Snyder gave the emails to reporters. Gruden had written them to Bruce Allen, who was then the GM of the team.