The man who has everything has found something he can’t quite get his hands on.
Tom Brady’s effort to purchase a slice of the Raiders has languished. He and majority owner Mark Davis have agreed to the deal. The league, which must approve the purchase, has yet to do so.
Nothing happened at this week’s ownership meetings.
“No, we never talked about that,” Colts owner (and finance committee member) Jim Irsay said Wednesday, via Jori Epstein of Yahoo.com.
Two weeks ago, the Washington Post reported that no action was expected.
There seem to be many potential reasons for the failure to rubber stamp Brady’s acquisition of what is believed to be five of 10 percent of the Raiders. From the new rule against giving equity to employees (which Davis spoke out against at the meeting it was adopted) to Brady’s upcoming broadcasting career with Fox to “a discount of as much as approximately 70 percent” in the price charged by Davis to Brady, there are various grounds for hesitation.
Irsay suggested on Wednesday that the bottom line is the bottom line. “The number just had to be a reasonable number for purchase price,” Irsay said.
Why would other owners care if Davis wants to give his apparent new BFF a really good deal? Owners have a very strong interest in maximizing the value of all equity in every franchise. If Brady buys 5-10 percent of the Raiders for relative peanuts, that becomes a potential impediment when some other owner tries to sell a piece of his or her franchise.
As explained when the NFL slammed the door on giving equity to employees, there’s a potential antitrust violation lurking in plain sight. Owners of businesses should be allowed to sell any, some, or all of the operation to whomever they choose, however they see fit. The problem for Davis is that he agreed to be bound by and through the rules and regulations of Big Shield.
There’s currently no reason to think Davis would try to file an antitrust lawsuit over what eventually could be a refusal to let him sell a piece of the team to Brady. If any owner is ever going to do it, however, it would be the son of the man who has already sued his partners under the antitrust laws.
