Dan Snyder has a deal in place to purchase the remaining 40% of the Washington Football Team ownership.
Snyder will pay close to $1 billion to acquire the shares of the team held by real estate mogul Dwight Schar, FedEx chief executive Fred Smith, and investor Robert Rothman, a person with knowledge of the agreement told Front Office Sports Wednesday.
The agreement effectively ends the long-running dispute between Snyder and the minority owners that led to allegations of an extortion campaign, a federal lawsuit, and an NFL investigation.
The next step is getting approval of the overall deal by 75% of team owners, an NFL source confirmed. The vote is scheduled to take place as soon as Tuesday at the annual league meetings. The NFL finance committee has agreed to a debt waiver of $450 million to allow Snyder to finance about half the deal, a source confirmed. Reporter Tyler Dunne was the first to report the agreement.
Front Office Sports previously reported that the attorney for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had contacted Moag & Co., the firm tapped by the co-owners to sell their chunk of the team.
Former U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch led an investigation into the feud between Snyder and the three WFT minority owners. The impending sale, however, makes that investigation moot.
A separate investigation into allegations of a hostile workplace environment is still pending, an NFL source told Front Office Sports. That inquiry is led by Beth Wilkinson, a former assistant U.S. attorney. Wilkinson was tapped to lead the outside investigation on Aug. 31 after two Washington Post stories detailed harassment allegations made by current and former WFT employees.
In November, Schar, Smith and Rothman sued Snyder in federal court after Snyder blocked the sale of their interest in the team for a reported $900 million. The Maryland-based judge in the case ordered the feuding owners back into arbitration.
