Washington Commanders fans wishing to see Jeff Bezos purchase the team from Dan Snyder better not get their hopes up too high.
Last week, it was reported that Snyder had hired the Bank of America to explore selling the Commanders franchise. It has also been reported that Jay-Z and Bezos are interested in purchasing the NFC East franchise.
But in his latest “Football Morning in America” column, Peter King of NBC Sports shared something major that he heard from a source: That Snyder wouldn’t sell the team to Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post newspaper:
And, re: the hot candidate to buy the team, billionaire Jeff Bezos, I also heard this from a reliable executive well-versed on ownership matters: “It’ll never happen. Dan Snyder detests The Washington Post. No way he’d sell to the owner of that paper.'”
Forbes recently gave the Commanders’ franchise a value of $5.6 billion, the sixth-highest behind only the Dallas Cowboys ($8 billion), New England Patriots ($6.4 billion), Los Angeles Rams ($6.2 billion), New York Giants ($6 billion) and Chicago Bears $5.8 billion.
Of course, professional sports franchises often sell well above market value. The Commanders are among football’s most historic franchises, and they play in one of the country’s biggest markets.
The Washington NFL franchise was once among the league’s model organizations, winning three Super Bowls under Hall of Fame head coach Joe Gibbs (1982, 1987 and 1991). But the team has sunk to the bottom of the standings under Snyder’s ownership.
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Snyder purchased the franchise in 1999. The team has endured just six winning seasons since then, and they’ve won just two postseason games. Washington’s last winning season came in 2016, and they last won a playoff game in 2005.
Attendance and ticket sales for Commanders games have continued to drop considerably over the years, as more and more fans have grown fed up with the Snyder-led team. It’s not uncommon to see a visiting team’s fans outnumber Washington fans at FedExField.
There is no firm timeline on when Snyder could sell the team, and who he might sell them to. But with Snyder supposedly unwilling to sell to Bezos, the Amazon founder will likely have to wait a while to join the NFL ownership circle.
