When embattled team owner Daniel Snyder began preliminary work to sell the Washington Commanders, some NFL insiders hatched a theory.
They believed that Snyder had set his reported asking price so high, $7 billion, that he could later stand down and refuse to sell, saying he’d not gotten the price he wanted. That would then force a vote by NFL team owners to make him sell the team.
That theory got shot down after a report Thursday by Forbes.com that Snyder has received offers “well north” of $7 billion for the team. The report did not specify which parties had made offers. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is presumably one of the interested bidders, as he’s been viewed as the favorite to buy the team, possibly in a partnership with rapper Jay Z, among others.
Forbes valued the Commanders at $5.6 billion in August, sixth highest among NFL teams. The record for an NFL franchise sale is $4.65 billion, for the Walton-Penner group’s purchase of the Denver Broncos in July.
Snyder and the Commanders have been embroiled in scandal for quite some time amid allegations of sexual harassment, misogyny, and financial fraud. In early December, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform released results of an investigation, concluding that “sexual harassment, bullying, and other toxic conduct pervaded the workplace at the Washington Commanders and were perpetuated by a culture of fear instilled” by Snyder.
