With news surfacing that three minority owners in Washington are looking to sell their shares of the team, it puts Dan Snyder in a tough position. While his family still holds onto approximately 60% of the shares, it might be hard to find anyone who wishes to take on the potential PR nightmare of getting in business with Snyder and his team. The easiest route forward would be to find someone who wishes to own the entire piece of the pie, but that would mean Snyder has to give up what might be his favorite piece of property.
This is something that ESPN’s Michael Wilbon could see happening.
“I don’t know that [Snyder will sell] but would I be surprised? No,” Wilbon said Monday morning via NBC Sports Washington. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all because I don’t believe he’s going along with this.”
According to Forbes, Washington’s football team is worth $3.1 billion, which is ranked as the 14th most expensive sports team in North America. There may be a number of right people who would pay that number to take over the team, but it may cost more than that in order to get Snyder to even consider giving them up.
“I just thought that while there’s all this reporting on cooperation and collaboration, I don’t believe a word of that stuff. I believe Snyder wants to fight this every step of the way,” Wilbon said. “I don’t believe he’s going along with this. I believe Snyder is sulking and pouting and raging and I don’t buy that he’s sitting around and saying, ‘Okay how about this name?’ I just don’t buy it.”
An interesting idea was floated over the weekend that Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos may pop up in the bidding for the team, as he has reportedly wanted to get into the NFL ownership circles for a while now. While it may not seem likely that he would become a part-owner with Snyder, he undoubtedly has the money to offer enough to buy the team outright from the current owner. If Bezos offered $4 billion or more to take Washington off of Snyder’s hands, would he say no?
Hard to say, but he’d at least have to listen.
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