Many won’t believe it until they see a new owner holding the keys and the pink slip while standing with a foot on Daniel Snyder’s chest. Nevertheless, the effort to sell the Commanders is moving forward.
TheAthletic.com reported on Friday that Josh Harris, who already owns multiple sports franchises, recently toured the Commanders facility. The Washington Post confirmed that report, adding that at least one other unnamed prospective buyer has done the same.
The item from TheAthletic.com also includes an important point of clarification. The first official round of bids is due in a few weeks. Prior reports had indicated that initial bids already had been made; however, those were “non-binding indications of interest,” and not technically bids.
That obviously means the door remains wide open for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose name has continued to surface even after the window for making bids supposedly had closed.
Harris tried to buy the Broncos. As PFT reported in the aftermath of the sale of the team to the Walton-Penner group, Harris would have offered $5 billion for the Broncos -- if that would have definitely gotten him the team. He didn’t want to offer $5 billion and have someone else (such as the current owners) bid $5 billion and one penny.
That kept the going rate for an NFL team at $4.65 billion, potentially making it cheaper for him to buy another team -- like the Commanders.
It’s unclear what the Commanders will fetch at this high-stakes auction. Shortly after owner Daniel Snyder announced an intention to explore selling the team, a report emerged that he wants $7 billion. On the eve of the deadline for “non-binding indications of interest,” a report emerged that he has received multiple offers “well north” of that figure. But then, once the window closed on that initial round of non-offer offers, none exceeded $6.3 billion.
Some still wonder whether, at the end of the day, Snyder will refuse to sell. At that point, some of the other owners may decide to try to force the issue.
