Snyder to Buy Out Minority Owners of WFT

Majority owner Dan Snyder has a deal in place to purchase the remaining 40% of the Washington Football Team that he doesn’t own. 

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 on 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 could take place as soon as Tuesday.

The NFL finance committee has agreed to a debt waiver of $450 million to allow Snyder to finance about half the deal, a source said. 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 makes that investigation moot. However, a separate investigation into allegations of a hostile workplace environment is still pending, an NFL source told FOS.