The Washington NFL team is retiring its 87-year-old nickname after Owner Daniel Snyder had a change of heart, and on the most recent episode of “SBJ Unpacks: The Road Ahead,” our Bill King and Ben Fischer discuss the internal and external forces that led Snyder to make the decision he said he would “NEVER” make.
On how finances and social justice influenced the decision:
Fischer: The financial side is real. Right now, in the pandemic, when new business is extraordinarily difficult if not stopped altogether, contracted revenue is the holy grail for any outfit. When you’ve got a naming rights sponsor talking about walking six years ahead of time, that’s something that is a little more stressful now than it was six months ago, no doubt. FedEx’s naming rights deal with the Redskins is generating $7.5M annually. That’s not nothing. It’s also not necessarily a dollar figure that puts the fear of god into an NFL team, but you add that up across all the sponsors and you’re starting to get a real problem. Having said that, I really don’t think that’s the primary lens to look through on this and the rapid evolutions in Washington. It’s much more a reflection of the social dynamics and the national conversation on race relations that’s been going on across the spring and into this summer.
On how the Redskins nickname impacted investor’s interest in the franchise:
Fischer: This is, under best of conditions, not necessarily an easy asset to trade, a non-controlling minority interest in an NFL team when the owner is Daniel Snyder. We’re talking 40% interest even if it’s at a 25% limited partner discount. Forty percent interest in the Redskins, if you’re using the Forbes valuation, would be $1B and change for something that theoretically would appreciate, but you have no control. Not that many people are wanting to spend that money for that limited control and liquidity and control. Then you add this Redskins name to it, and it only makes it more complicated. Future business development and revenue generation is going to be an uphill battle as long as that nickname is so toxic in the social, cultural brand world. I don’t know if the new name necessarily changes that valuation a lot, but I think Redskins was holding down the valuation of that in a theoretical way.
On how owners around the league reacted to news of the name change:
Fischer: For a long time, the talking point has been this is a team issue. It’s Daniel Snyder’s personal property. He’s essentially a one-man warden in that regard, and it will change when he wants it to and not any later or sooner than that. They have acknowledged that before we became aware of it he was in conversations with the league office about this, and we’re speculating here, but there’s good reason to believe that the league got a little more aggressive about this in between the first large scale Black Lives Matter protest in May and now. We don’t know exactly what, but the marching orders from Roger Goodell have been clear that the NFL is no longer going to equivocate on these issues, and it’s totally on its players’ side. It’s going to not back down in the face of political pressures, and that it is going to greatly expand its positioning on racial and social justice. I don’t know you do that if the Redskins brand are a part of the organization.
