Commanders Label Allegations ‘Implausible’ in Response to FTC

The Washington Commanders’ legal team called the allegations made by a former team ticket employee “uncorroborated and implausible” in Monday’s 102-page letter to the Federal Trade Commission. 

The document obtained by Front Office Sports — which included email exchanges, spreadsheet, and affidavits from former Commanders general counsel David Donovan and former team COO Mitch Gershman — served as response to last week’s letter sent by the House Oversight Committee to the FTC.

Jordan Siev, a partner at the firm Reed Smith who represents the Commanders, wrote that the team was not given “any mechanism whatsoever for the team to address the truth of the allegations.” 

The Commanders’ Rebuttal 

In the letter, Oversight Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney wrote that team executives and owner Dan Snyder “may have engaged in a troubling, long-running, and potentially unlawful pattern of financial conduct.”

• The Commanders’ legal team wrote that auditors “unsurprisingly” didn’t find anything amiss with how revenue from a Navy-Notre Dame game or a Kenny Chesney concert was accounted for, as Jason Friedman, the ex-employee, claimed. 
• The team claimed it didn’t intentionally underreport Commanders ticket revenue and thus didn’t, short revenue sharing requirements under NFL bylaws. 
• The Commanders say deposits for club seats were not converted into team revenue, as Friedman alleged. 

Allegations that the Commanders held back ticket revenue from the NFL were first reported by FOS on April 2 and those claims were part of the Oversight Committee’s letter to the FTC, using evidence provided by Friedman.