The Commanders sale was so complicated, it was ‘like 20 deals in one’

“There were definitely points that I felt that this was not going to happen,” Mitchell Rales, the co-founder of Danaher Corporation and the top investor in Harris’s group, told The Post earlier this week. “ … [Harris and I] were saying we’re spending a lot of money on this process with lawyers and accountants and others. Do we want to continue down this road? We both concluded together, and we always made these decisions together, do we want to continue to hang around the hoop? And the answer was yes.”

The complexity of the deal stems in part from the sheer value; the $6.05 billion price was the highest ever for a U.S. pro sports franchise, far surpassing the $4.65 billion Rob Walton’s family paid for the Denver Broncos in 2022.

“I was an investor by trade, and I’m used to deals, but this has definitely been super complicated,” Harris said. “It’s like 20 deals in one.”

Harris’s investment group features approximately 20 limited partners, including Rales, D.C. venture capitalist and sports team owner Mark Ein, pro basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Google co-founder Eric Schmidt and David Blitzer, the co-founder of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. Although the group collectively has a net worth of hundreds of billions of dollars, it includes families and international investors whom the NFL and its attorneys had to individually vet.

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The NFL’s finance committee initially raised concerns about the structure of Harris’s deal, believing it was over the league’s $1.1 billion debt limit. But Harris agreed to make adjustments, and he and Rales left an in-person meeting with the committee on June 7 at the NFL’s offices in Manhattan with their part of the transaction essentially done.

“In the deal business, most deals don’t get done,” Harris said. “So I always approach these things and manage my own expectations in terms of what’s going to happen. … Once we engaged, I felt that our chances were good because it would be hard for someone else to put together what we put together.”

The deal crossed the final hurdle when attorneys for the NFL and for Daniel Snyder resolved the outstanding legal issues that could’ve delayed the approval vote and close of the sale, two people with knowledge of the deliberations said Monday. The Snyders had been unwilling to indemnify the league and the other owners for legal liability stemming from Jon Gruden’s lawsuit against the NFL, people familiar with the situation said. The terms of the resolution between the Snyders and the NFL remain unclear.

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Harris’s group also had to compete against two other bids, from Canadian investor Steve Apostolopoulos and Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, and faced the possibility of a third.

“Listen, everybody kept expecting Jeff Bezos to come out of left field and buy this franchise,” Rales said. “I gave it a high probability.”

The Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post retained the investment firm Allen & Company to evaluate a potential bid. Although he declined to bid, there was speculation he might swoop in late in the process and top the highest offer, given his estimated net worth of approximately $160 billion.

Harris, who co-founded the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, built his fortune on acquiring distressed assets and creating value. He parlayed it into a career as a sports team owner, acquiring the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, NHL’s New Jersey Devils, Premier League’s Crystal Palace and a minority stake in Joe Gibbs Racing.

Harris’s bid failed to win the Broncos auction last year, and he moved quickly after the Snyders’ announcement in November to make a play for his hometown team. How quickly?

“The next day?” Ein said jokingly. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity in our town.”

Ein grew up nearly a block away from Harris in Chevy Chase. Rales is from Bethesda, Md., and owns the private art museum Glenstone, a 230-acre expanse in Potomac that features the modern and contemporary art he owns with his wife, art historian Emily Wei Rales.

The three men have been devoted fans of Washington’s NFL team, often attending games at RFK Stadium and then at FedEx Field.

“The only sports franchise that I would ever be involved with is the one we’re talking about,” Rales said. “I have no interest in anything else in sports. It’s not really where my desires are, but I have an affinity for the Commanders and have been a lifelong fan.”

The love of the Commanders was mutual for Ein, who says he only invests in D.C. sports. A venture capitalist and philanthropist, he is also the founder of MDE Sports, which owns the Mubadala Citi DC Open tennis tournament, and the World TeamTennis franchise Washington Kastles.

“I had known Magic Johnson from the [NBA], so it was like the coming together of people who love sports, people who have been my partners in the past, like David Blitzer, people that we had looked at their investments in sports with, and then the Washington crowd and the NFL crowd,” Harris said. “That allowed for us to bring in a lot of great investors.”

Although most of the work for Harris’s group was done with the attorneys and bankers representing each side, Harris did have some direct interactions with Daniel Snyder throughout the eight-month process. His interactions with team executives, however, were minimal. The NFL prohibited the impending owners from dealing with current employees until the sale closed.

“I think that getting to know people and giving people the opportunity to succeed is important,” Harris said. “So we’re going to be doing a lot of watching, listening, learning and getting up to speed over the next year.”

But after a tedious eight months, Harris spent his first moments as an NFL owner getting to know some other people. Inside a ballroom at a Minneapolis-area hotel, he sat before his fellow NFL owners to learn his group’s deal for the Commanders had been approved.

“All negotiations are filled with surprises,” Rales said. “There were plenty of surprises here. But at the end of the day, we’re grateful that [Snyder] decided to sell the team and that we were the chosen one. He could have certainly gone in a different direction.”