https://www.wsj.com/articles/minority-owners-pressure-dan-snyder-to-sell-washingtons-nfl-team-11597343129?mod=hp_lead_pos11

By Andrew Beaton and Cara Lombardo
Aug. 13, 2020 2:25 pm ET


The minority partners of Washington’s NFL team are pressuring Dan Snyder to sell the franchise, according to people familiar with the matter, amid a growing firefight inside a team facing controversy on multiple fronts.

Mr. Snyder, the team’s 55-year-old billionaire owner, has no intention to sell his majority stake in the team, the people said. A recent legal filing by Mr. Snyder suggests that at least one of the minority partners has attempted to leak defamatory information against him.

The team’s minority owners—FedEx Corp. CEO Fred Smith, Black Diamond Capital chairman Robert Rothman and NVR Inc. board chairman Dwight Schar—own approximately 40% of the team and have hired an investment firm to sell their interest in the franchise formerly known as the Redskins. Those same stakes would become more valuable if the entire team, which would likely be worth several billion dollars, were to be sold, the people said.

The stakes have attracted interest from a variety of potential buyers, but Mr. Snyder has been reluctant to give any of them the option to eventually buy control despite the attempt to oust him, the people said. That has prompted some would-be buyers to walk away.

Sales of minority stakes typically come at a significant discount if they don’t provide a path to ultimately control over the team. If the team were to go up for sale, the limited partners or whoever purchases them would have a right of first refusal, one of the people said.

Mr. Snyder declined to comment.

The rancor between the partners comes at a time when the team is already mired in conflict. Last month, Mr. Snyder and the Washington Football Team hired a law firm to conduct an internal investigation into the team’s culture following a report by the Washington Post that detailed a pattern of sexual and verbal harassment from 2006 to 2019. Mr. Snyder wasn’t implicated in the story. Mr. Snyder, in a statement afterward, said the reported behavior has no place in the team.

Also last month, the franchise abandoned its name of 87 years after amplified calls to get rid of a moniker that was widely seen as derogatory. Mr. Snyder, who once vowed never to change the name, faced pressure from politicians, activists and even his own sponsors as the NFL grappled with its role in the nationwide movement against systemic racism.

Those sponsors included FedEx, which is the namesake of the team’s stadium and run by Mr. Smith. When FedEx publicly asked the team to change its name, it effectively pitted the owners against one another.

The issues between the parties predate the recent decision to change the name. Mr. Smith had been looking to sell his stake in the team for at least a year and at one point, he thought he found a buyer. But a slow approval process involving Mr. Snyder for that new potential minority owner turned off the would-be buyer, who opted to purchase a minority stake in another NFL franchise instead, one person familiar with the dealings said.

Messrs. Rothman and Schar have also since decided to sell, and the trio contracted the investment bank Moag & Co. to sell their shares. Mr. Rothman didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mr. Schar couldn’t be reached for comment.

The tensions between the parties have grown more severe in recent weeks. While the minority partners privately look to push Mr. Snyder into selling, a lawsuit filed by Mr. Snyder suggests that one of the minority partners is behind a plot to leak defamatory information about him.

In a Monday filing in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., Mr. Snyder requested access to documents from a former executive assistant for the team, Mary-Ellen Blair, as part of a defamation case he filed in India against an Indian media company, MEA Worldwide, which Mr. Snyder says slandered him in July articles that have since been taken down. The filing refers to an unnamed “financial benefactor” aiding Ms. Blair and says she had been seeking to spread damaging information about Mr. Snyder.

Without naming any of the limited partners directly, the filing strongly implies that one of the limited partners could be involved in the effort to defame Mr. Snyder. Mr. Scharr’s daughter, Tracy, is on the board of Comstock, the real-estate company that owns the building where Ms. Blair lives, and Mr. Snyder’s filing says Ms. Blair has lived above her means at the property. The filing petitions discovery from Comstock to “shed light on Blair’s motive for seeking to defame and the nature of her ties to other participants in the same scheme.”

“This legal action will pierce the cloak of anonymity MEAWW has used to protect its nefarious clients, and ensure that those culprits pulling the strings to falsely attack Mr. Snyder from the shadows are brought into the light,” said Joe Tacopina, Mr. Snyder’s lawyer.

A lawyer for Ms. Blair said she never communicated with or provided information to MEA Worldwide. “This filing is an obvious and inappropriate attempt to silence Ms. Blair and others who may wish to communicate with legitimate news organizations about the culture of sexism, harassment and abuse that has existed at the highest levels of the Washington Football team for decades,” said Lisa Banks, Ms. Blair’s lawyer.

In an email through her secretary, Tracy Schar, who is Comstock’s senior vice president of marketing, provided Ms. Blair’s tenant history that she says showed that Ms. Blair has paid market rate for her apartment and that many of the team’s players, coaches and team staff have lived at the property because of its location.

“Any insinuation that Ms. Blair has received special treatment for any reason is patently false,” Ms. Schar said. “Any allegations or disparagement of Comstock is just spin designed to deflect from public reports of extremely disturbing behavior overseen by Mr. Snyder in his tenure as the majority owner of the Washington Football Team.”

Mr. Snyder made much of his fortune building Snyder Communications, a marketing and advertising company that he took public in 1996 and sold in 2000 for more than $2 billion. He was the youngest team owner in the NFL when he acquired the Redskins in 1999 for $750 million.