A lot of attention has been paid to Tom Brady buying a piece of the Las Vegas Raiders. Last year it was reported as a done deal, but then owners balked because the discount owner Mark Davis offered would have affected franchise valuations.
Now reports emerge that they have resolved that issue and Brady may be in line to become a minority owner https://www.nfl.com/news/tom-brady-on-track-to-become-a-raiders-minority-owner-set-for-tv-future-with-fox. I received a call yesterday from a source who wondered about one prospective roadblock: the existing limited partners.
In 2007 then owner Al Davis, financially struggling (yes there was an era before stratospheric TV revenues that NFL teams were not draped in profits, so much so that team-to-team revenue sharing was a big issue) sold 20 percent of the team to a group of investors led by David Abrams and Paul Leff, financiers https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-approves-deal-for-raiders-to-sell-minority-interest-in-team-09000d5d80392239.
There are other LPs in the Raiders, but these are largely small shareholders whose holdings date back to the 1960s when pater Davis took over the team.
Abram’s and Leff’s partnerships interests include a right of first refusal (ROFR), said the source. That means they get the option to buy any stake in the team that goes up for sale. So, if Brady does indeed have a deal to buy part of the Raiders–a stake likely cobbled together from some of the older LPs and perhaps some of Mark Davis’ holdings–Abrams and or Leff could step in front of the GOAT and buy the shares.
“If to the extent Mark Davis was going to sell any of his interest to Tom Brady, the Leff group, I refer to it as a Leff group because he is the sort of the voice of that limited partnership entity, that group would have a right to exercise a right of first refusal,” this source said. “So let's say Mark Davis agrees to sell Tom Brady X percent at X amount, they have an absolute right to match that and buy that. So nobody's figured that out yet.”
Stan Kroenke was a St. Louis Rams limited partner when he executed a ROFR and blocked Shahid Khan from buying the team. So there is a history in the NFL of this happening.
Now a few caveats. If the Brady slice is small, it might not be worth it for the existing LPs. And even if it is more substantial as reported, would they want to block the opportunity to bring Brady on as an LP and affiliate the team with his brand? It might not be a popular move in Vegas to block the GOAT.
Abrams and Leff though have held their stakes for 17 years, it's possible they want more say in the organization and how the team operates. I don’t know the answers here, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
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I asked Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons, last week about his views on the political attacks on DEI. Blank has been a big supporter of DEI, both at the league and nationally and has spoken about the issue passionately. He didn’t get into efforts to strip away DEI, but took issue with the charge that it is reverse racism.
DEI’s “gone across America for many, many, many, many years now. And I think the NFL has done a remarkably good job the last four or five years, in my opinion, with I mean, really, results that are, you know, clear, clearly can be demonstrated.
“You always want to make sure that you make decisions that are independent of color. But I think the purpose of all of the work of the Rooney Rule or any aspects of the expansion of that is to really make sure that when people are hiring, they're looking at a diverse group of choices, positions. And that's why we should be doing everything in America that way, honestly.”
While DEI is under attack in academia and some states, it is not going away in the NFL.
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Blank is part of the Strategic Sports Group, which is investing up to $3 billion in the PGA Tour, which is privatizing its business unit. Players will soon make up a majority on the board of directors of that new entity, he said. That’s a big win for the golfers.