The latest round of league meetings came and went without the owners voting on Tom Brady’s effort to purchase a significant piece of the Las Vegas Raiders. Again.
It’s still not clear if/when the partial sale ever will be approved.
The problems, based on reporting from the league’s October meetings indicate, include the recent rule against giving equity to employees to Brady’s upcoming broadcasting career with Fox to a discount of as much as roughly 70 percent of the purchase the price charged by Davis to Brady for up to 10 percent of the team.
“The number just had to be a reasonable number for purchase price,” Colts owner Jim Irsay said at the time.
Mark Maske of the Washington Post recently reported that the deal is “definitely not dead.” It might not be dead, but to get done it’s apparently going to require Brady to dig deeper into his non-FTX portfolio for cash.
In theory, a business owner should be able to sell all or part of his business to anyone, for any amount he sees fit. The NFL operates differently. The owners don’t want the value of their own teams to be diminished by someone like Davis selling all or part of a team for less than he should.
Yes, it’s an antitrust violation. But all owners agree to the rules. If any will ever challenge the rules, the one to do it would be Davis. That propensity is imprinted on his DNA.