A trio of minority owners wanting to sell their stake of the Redskins could be the the spark that ignites a larger sale, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk theorizes.
Over the weekend, Florio was first to report that Dwight Schar, Fred Smith and, later, Robert Rothman – whom, together, hold a 40 percent share of the Redskins – have "actively been trying to sell their pieces of the team," but "have to date been unable to find a buyer."
A statement last Thursday from FedEx – the naming rights sponsor of Washington's "FedEx Field" – sharing that the company has communicated to the organization its request for the Redskins name to be changed, proved a seismic shift from the status quo when one considers that Smith, FedEx's founder and CEO, had decided to move against Dan Snyder publicly.
"There's two possible ways this can go," Florio told The Sports Junkies Monday. "Rothman, Schar and Smith can find buyers for reportedly, roughly 40 percent of the team. Or, maybe Snyder just eventually throws his hands up in the air and says 'I'm done.' I'm taking my ball and I'm going home, and I'm gonna sell my 60 percent at a valuation of $3 billion."
"I never really buy these valuations that we see from Forbes or whatever," Florio qualified. "Ultimately the asset is worth what someone will pay for it. Maybe it'll be more than $3 billion – who knows. Maybe it'll be less than $3 billion. But whatever it is, it'll be a huge return over what he paid back in 1999, and maybe he decides he's had enough and he's gonna move on, especially given the indignity of being forced into changing the name. That may be something that the ego of a billionaire doesn't let him recover from."
Forbes currently has the Redskins valued at $3.4 billion, approx. 4.5 times Snyder's purchase price in 1999. Meaning, theoretically, Snyder stands to gain $2.04 billion if he were to sell his 60 percent ownership stake. As Florio notes, that's assuming someone doesn't offer to pay more than the organization's Forbes valuation in a bidding war.
Should Snyder take the drastic leap of attempting to sell the Redskins, Florio believes Jeff Bezos – the billionaire founder and CEO of Amazon, and owner of The Washington Post – will be the first name bandied about as a potential buyer.
"There aren't a lot of guys out there that can write a check that would be large enough to buy a team and also run the team," said Florio. "But Jeff Bezos is the first name that's gonna pop up."
"It's well known that he wants in," he said, "and it's well known that the owners of the other NFL teams wouldn't mind having him in, given that he runs Amazon and given that it would be a hell of a lot easier to work out deals for the streaming rights to games if one of the guys that they're a partner with is also the guy that runs Amazon."
"If Bezos wanted in, it may not be that he would want the 60 percent owned by Snyder; he may just want to buy the full 100 percent," he continued. "Like, I never understood why anybody with sufficient means would want to not hold the full equity. If you've got the money, why do you even want to have to deal with minority partners? What's the point?
"If you've got the funds to buy the whole thing – and surely Bezos does – just give me the full 100 percent and everybody else can stand down."
As for the Schar, Smith and Rothman contingent of Redskins ownership, Florio reported on Sunday that it was Smith's "dissatisfaction with the name and other issues" which had brought him to the point of wanting out. Asked whether the team's name has dissuaded potential buyers more so than the idea of working with Snyder, Florio couldn't say.
"I don't know this," Florio prefaced. "I think that the name is kind of a lesser included problem of working with Snyder and having no say. I think that's the thing that's made it harder to sell, the percentages that are out there that Schar and Smith had been trying to sell. And again, who knows where this is gonna go from here."
"It's just a bizarre few days where this has all really accelerated. It's been more of a revolution than an evolution of this story, and it really wouldn't shock me if the way the dominoes fall results in Snyder no longer owning the team," said Florio. "That wouldn't surprise me. I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but it wouldn't surprise me."
"And you gotta figure the guy's got a lot of enemies out there, former employees that are out there, that are maybe motivated to cause trouble for him as payback for all the trouble he caused for them over the years," he continued. "And you never know what those people know and what they may be inclined to ultimately say, if there is some sort of a push that the minority owners end up trying to make to maybe nudge Dan out and facilitate the selling of their interests or welcoming in somebody who would just take over what Snyder owns."
