Five months have passed since Dan Snyder announced the hiring of Bank of America to look into a possibility of a sale of the Washington Commanders and, despite having a deal agreed to buy the team, there may be four months to go before the team is under new ownership.
Daniel Kaplan, sports business reporter with The Athletic, joined The Kevin Sheehan Show on Tuesday to take a look at the timeline of the sale to a group led by Josh Harris and talked about his report that the sale has provisions to partly indemnify Snyder against future litigation tied to his tenure.
Kaplan explains that as things stand now, the deal with Harris (and partners that include Mitchell Rales and Magic Johnson) is "unsigned" and has been sent to the NFL for review and that is "quite an unusual move."
"It's unofficial, it's informal," Kaplan told Sheehan of the process. "The way this usually works is the buying group reaches a deal with the sellers, they sign an agreement and they send it to the NFL to vet the new owners and make sure everything is Kosher. That's not what's happening here.
"The Harris group is sending it on their own to the NFL to make sure the contract language, which includes the indemnification is OK."
Why is the Harris group doing that, Sheehan asked. "Is it because Dan's not communicating this to the NFL?"
"That is my presumption here," Kaplan said, adding it has been well-known that Snyder has not been communicating with the NFL with Atalanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank had said the owners were being somewhat kept in the dark on the sale in late March.
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So how far along is the sale process and how will this ultimately shakeout?
Kaplan said he believes the Harris group is quite confident in this bid being finalized, but since the deal is not yet exclusive (and the Harris group has not entered a non-exclusive negotiating period), this unorthodox process of a sports team being sold. It could mean Snyder is holding out hope of another bidder entering the fray.
"My hunch," Kaplan said is that the deal with Harris' group and Snyder is resolved within the "next couple of weeks."
But the entire sale process will not be finalized that fast at all. After the exclusive deal is reached and signed, the NFL will begin the vetting process of all the partners, including Ralles and Johnson, and Kaplan said there are seven to nine undisclosed partners and "that can take months."
Then it will go to the NFL finance committee and they will want to know about the controlling person of the franchise before it goes to the vote of the other NFL owners.
"I would see it more as by the start of training camp this thing gets approved," Kaplan told Sheehan. The Commanders will likely open up training camp in the final week of July.
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