NFL’s Troubled Washington Commanders Bought For $6B By Investor Group Including Magic Johnson, Setting Sports Franchise Record

Dade Hayes
Updated ·2 min read
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The Washington Commanders, an NFL team with a heritage of success but a more recent history of unchecked scandal and mismanagement, has been sold to an investor group for $6 billion.

The transaction, which was first reported by Deadline sister publication Sportico and later by other media outlets, sets a new record for a sports franchise. Surging NFL TV ratings have boosted the value of franchises across the league, with the previous record being set just last year with the $4.6 billion paid for the Denver Broncos. (Soccer’s Manchester United in England’s Premier League, has been rumored to be fetching bids in the $6 billion range.)

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Dan Snyder, who has owned the Washington team for more than two decades but has failed to return it to glory amid a non-stop torrent of dysfunction and controversy, had been under pressure to sell the club.

Magic Johnson, who is already a part-owner of baseball’s LA Dodgers as well as the MLS Cup champion LAFC and the LA Sparks, is part of the investment group buying the Commanders. Led by Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Josh Harris, the new group also includes billionaire Mitchell Rales. Months ago, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had explored a potential bid, but was rebuffed by Snyder given the tech mogul’s ownership of the Washington Post, which has published a number of damning investigations into misdeeds by Snyder and the front office.

The catalog of offenses, which were probed by the NFL but never resulted in any formal discipline, included sexual harassment, racial discrimination and the creation of a work environment known as one of the most noxious in professional sports or corporate America. Congress and other government bodies have been looking into Snyder’s leadership of the team as well as its finances.

Snyder bought the team, then known as the Redskins, for $800 million in 1999. As other front-office dramas were playing out, Snyder was also mounting fierce resistance to changing the team’s name despite mounting criticism of it as racist. After the former owner finally bent to pressure from corporate sponsors and agreeing to a shift, the team played for a period of time as simply The Washington Football Team until it conducted a fan poll to arrive at Commanders.

On the field, Snyder’s troops have also performed poorly. Amid a marked decline from three Super Bowl wins during the 1980s and ’90s, the team has now gone 18 years since its last playoff win, amassing a record under Snyder of 164-220-2.

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