From the moment Daniel Snyder confirmed he was exploring options to sell the Washington Commanders, the names of various billionaire investors surfaced as prospective buyers.
New ownership could re-open the door to a new Commanders stadium
Snyder long has sought without success to drum up the requisite political and corporate support to build a roughly $2 billion NFL stadium and commercial complex in the District, Maryland or Virginia.
A new team owner, however, could revive those stalled efforts quickly.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) confirmed as much following Snyder’s statement last week that he had hired BofA Securities, a division of Bank of America, to “consider potential transactions.”
“It sounds like a positive move for the team,” Bowser told reporters Wednesday. “There have been a lot of objections raised about the team coming back to RFK, where it played for many years, and the ownership was one. The name was one. So, I think a number of the obstacles of that people have raised as criticisms [are going away].”
Jack Evans, who as former finance chair of the D.C. Council spent years trying to pave the way for a new NFL stadium at the site of RFK, said he remained optimistic that a deal could be struck despite Snyder’s lack of political allies and unpopularity with fans. That changed, in Evans’s view, the moment Congress started investigating allegations of widespread workplace sexual harassment under Snyder’s watch.
“It just became impossible with Dan there — not only for us, but for Virginia and Maryland,” said Evans, who was instrumental in structuring deals that brought Capital One Arena and Nationals Park to the District. “It became a game-breaker. As long as he owns the team, there will not be a new stadium. Period. That’s just not going to happen — unless he builds on land he already owns at FedEx Field, which would be a disaster, and did that with his own money.”
If Snyder sells the team in full rather than takes on a co-investor, it could revive efforts to drum up competition for a new stadium among the three jurisdictions, despite arguments over the wisdom of public subsidies.
Political football
Snyder’s unveiled plans for a glitzy stadium surrounded by a moat, at a site to be determined, in a nationally televised segment on “60 Minutes” in March 2016.
More than six years later, the team has no site, no suitors, and no plan for financing the roughly 60,000-seat, open-air facility that Snyder envisions anchoring a vast commercial and residential complex. The team is contractually obligated to play at FedEx Field in Landover, Md., until 2027. Without a new stadium, it can continue playing there indefinitely, as Snyder owns the land and the aging stadium, which opened in 1997.
Until June, Virginia had been the most aggressive jurisdiction expressing interest in offering Snyder public funds for the project. But lawmakers failed to pass stadium-authority legislation earlier this year due to the team’s scandals.
Legislators could try again in early 2023, although there’s no sign of a push to do so.
“I think [a full sale of the Commanders] alleviates a lot of the question marks and clouds,” Virginia state Sen. Jeremy S. McPike (D-Prince William) said in an interview with WUSA9 last week, citing the pending investigations and “other noise” surrounding the organization. “Frankly, hopefully, they focus on winning the games like they did on [Sunday].”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) responded to news of a potential Commanders sale by telling reporters, “We’ll let them make that decision, and then we’ll react.”
He added: “I’ll repeat what I’ve said for a long time: Virginia should be the best place to live, work and raise a family. And it’d be a great place to have a professional football team.”
In Maryland, state legislators in April authorized $400 million in bonds to develop Metro’s Blue Line corridor that includes FedEx Field and the site of a potential new stadium. Repeated failed efforts to secure a new stadium have frustrated outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who last month told reporters, “We’ve been trying to work with them for eight years.”
Wes Moore, the Democratic candidate to replace Hogan as governor, said in a statement through a spokesman that, while he hopes the team stays in Maryland, he would not “support leveraging hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to do it.”
In a statement, Republican candidate Del. Dan Cox did not comment on how the sale might impact the state’s negotiation with the team over any future stadium deals.
It’s unclear whether the state would offer more to convince the team to stay in Prince George’s County, regardless of its owner. But County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) issued a statement last week stressing the merits of remaining in the county.
“We continue to believe that Largo is the best suited location for the Washington Commanders,” Alsobrooks’s statement read. “A new Commanders stadium would be in the heart of downtown Largo and our Blue Line Corridor.”
Even with a new owner, Bowser likely would face opposition from the D.C. Council to bring the team back to the city.
D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who represents neighborhoods near RFK Stadium, wrote a letter to Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) in June on behalf of seven of the 13-member Council saying that an NFL stadium on the site is a nonstarter.
The 190-acre RFK site is owned by the federal government via the National Park Service. Norton has introduced legislation that would enable District officials to buy the land and, in turn, decide what to do with it. Norton’s position is that if D.C. wants its NFL team to return and buys the land, it would be free to negotiate a deal to do just that.
Last week, Allen welcomed the prospect of an ownership change via social media but reiterated his opposition to a stadium.
“[Snyder] finally making a good decision here for the team & what it means to so many in the DC area,” Allen wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “Still … finding a better billionaire to own the team won’t make building a massive & rarely used NFL stadium at RFK a good idea. Let’s focus on more housing, jobs, & parks instead.”
Evans, who started working on plans for a new NFL stadium at RFK just a few years after former owner Jack Kent Cooke abandoned the site for Prince George’s in 1997, argues that the District is by far the best location not only for fans, given its easy access and storied tradition, but also for the league.
“I believe the NFL wants to be in the District of Columbia, at the RFK site. Why? Because the NFL spends, I believe, $2 million a year lobbying Congress,” said Evans, who resigned after 28 years on the Council amid ethics violations and now serves as a D.C.-based consultant. “They know the value of the federal government and its support of the league.”
Cost of business
Snyder, 57, who bought Washington’s NFL team with two former business partners for $800 million in 1999, has not said what precipitated his sudden interest in soliciting a buyer, whether in part or in full, after battling for years in court, in the media, and via private investigators to tighten his grip on the franchise.
Forbes magazine in August estimated the present-day value of the franchise as $5.6 billion.
Snyder remains the focus of four investigations — by former U.S. attorney Mary Jo White on behalf of the NFL, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and the attorneys general in the District and Virginia. In addition, investigators for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia have interviewed witnesses regarding allegations of financial improprieties involving the team, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.
As recently as Oct. 18, in response to Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay’s unprecedented public remarks that he believed the idea of NFL owners removing Snyder from their ranks had merit, Snyder said through a team spokesperson that he would never sell the team
Irsay’s comments followed a privately expressed sentiment of multiple NFL owners who told The Post they believed the league and owners should consider removing Snyder or convincing him to sell.
During his weekly radio appearance on Audacy’s 105.3 The Fan, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pointed to Snyder’s finances as a reason.
While Snyder and his family own 100 percent of the franchise, he is carrying a heavy debt burden. In March 2021, the NFL granted him a waiver to borrow an additional $450 million so he could buy out the 40 percent collective stake of his three limited partners Dwight Schar, Fred Smith and Robert Rothman, with whom he was embroiled in a legal dispute, for $875 million. That loan must be repaid by 2028 for Snyder to remain in the league
Added to Snyder’s unretired debt on the stadium, that would appear to make borrowing further to finance a $2 billion stadium untenable. If Snyder could find an investor interested in buying a minority share in the team, that could provide the cash to build a stadium himself in Maryland with the state contributing public funds only toward infrastructure.
Jones suggested that’s why he was unsurprised that Snyder was exploring options.
“He recently acquired a very significant portion of the team by 40 percent from his other partners and, at the same time, he’s entertaining the building of a new stadium. … It’s going to require huge economic resources,” Jones said. “This doesn’t surprise me that he’s in a time of real planning and thinking about how to manage the economic resources it takes that we want Washington to be.”
Snyder’s failure to show progress on delivering a new NFL stadium — with no site set and no evidence of political or public support for helping him finance the project — does not sit well with several NFL owners who were once impressed by Snyder’s business acumen.
Within years of buying the team, Snyder expanded FedEx Field to seat nearly 92,000 and led the NFL in average attendance. After two decades of losing seasons that also have included front-office turmoil, roster churn and workplace controversy, the stadium has been downsized at least three times. Washington currently ranks last among the 32 NFL teams in game-day attendance, drawing just 58,720.
Economic engine
For the Commanders, a new stadium would represent the best chance of rebooting enthusiasm for a team that for decades united the region but has posted just six winning seasons in 23 years under Snyder.
If done properly, a new stadium also would be a boon for the team’s bottom line, as well as the NFL.
“A stadium is an engine for local revenue,” said former NFL executive vice president Eric Grubman, who was instrumental in helping numerous teams develop new stadiums from financing through construction during his 2004-2018 tenure as the league’s senior manager of business operations — including the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium, San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium, Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Las Vegas Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium and others.
“Any club that has a poorly run engine has a difficult if not impossible time keeping up with the rest of the clubs in revenue generation. You need that engine for growth.”
Grubman, who left the NFL in 2018 and now works with the publicly traded gaming company Supergroup and DroneUp, declined to comment on any aspect of a potential Commanders sale but addressed why new and newly refurbished stadiums are so important to the league.
All NFL owners share equally in the league’s multibillion-dollar national broadcast deals, which account for the bulk of their revenue. What makes one team worth more than another, in large part, is the additional local revenue that NFL owners generate via luxury-suite sales, stadium naming rights deals, corporate sponsorships, personal-seat licenses and other stadium-related revenue.
According to Forbes.com, the Cowboys’ revenue increased 50 percent, from $280 million to $420 million, in 2009, the year AT&T Stadium opened.
New stadiums increase a franchise’s value, in turn. In the case of the Commanders, a potential buyer might push for a discounted price because FedEx Field is aging and underperforming financially. Conversely, the team’s value would increase considerably with the assurance of a stadium deal in a prime location under favorable terms.
The Los Angeles Rams’ SoFi Stadium, anchor of a $5 billion to $6 billion commercial complex largely financed by team owner and billionaire developer Stan Kroenke, reset the value of the franchise after it opened in September 2020.
Forbes estimated the Rams were worth at $3.8 billion in 2019 and $6.2 billion in August.
SoFi Stadium, also the leased home of the Los Angeles Chargers, proved a boon for the NFL as well in setting revenue records as host of last season’s Super Bowl. It will also host matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup — an opportunity denied Washington because of the shortcomings of FedEx Field.
“When you have a declining or decrepit stadium, it affects the enthusiasm of people coming to visit,” Grubman said. “If things are shabby or there are leaks, it’s not a premium experience. Or for players, if the visiting locker room doesn’t look anywhere near like what it looks like at other stadiums — these things all have an effect on branding, marketing and morale.
“A stadium is also a monument that can be a magnetic attraction for a city or a region to bring people in. You build a beautiful stadium, and it’s going to be marketed to the entire planet by NFL TV. A city doesn’t have to do anything for people to know it’s there: Hundreds of millions of eyeballs and ears will see and hear it courtesy of television.”
Laura Vozzella, Erin Cox, Meagan Flynn and Michael Brice-Saddler contributed to this report.
Source: WP
