When Jeff Bezos steps down as the CEO of Amazon later this year and hands the reins to the global retailer to top executive Andy Jassy, he’s going to have some time to kill.
Though nothing is imminent, it is possible the 57-year-old will at least partially fill out his schedule by becoming a partial owner of the Washington Football Team.
According to court documents obtained by Front Office Sports, Bezos’s attorney spoke with Moag & Co, the Baltimore-based sports investment banking firm that is representing the trio of minority owners who own a combined 40% of the organization and want out.
The connection is complicated, but the minority owners — real estate exec Dwight Schar, FedEx chief executive Fred Smith and investor Robert Rothman — had a deal to sell their shares but majority owner Daniel Snyder blocked the sale. In a related move, Snyder filed a defamation lawsuit claiming Schar led “an extortion campaign” to force Snyder to sell his stake in the team. That lawsuit, which was filed against Indian media company MEA WorldWide, mentions the attorney for Bezos.
“In that lawsuit, Snyder’s attorneys claimed that MEA WorldWide published a string of false stories and social media posts erroneously stating Snyder had ties to sex trafficking and was close to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein,” according to Front Office Sports. “Snyder’s lawyers wrote that John Moag, the founder of Moag & Co., had advance knowledge of MEA WorldWide’s ‘corrupt disinformation campaign by, among other things, spreading malicious lies’ about Snyder.”
In an interesting twist, The Washington Post — which is owned by Bezos — published a bombshell report about conditions for female staffers within the Washington organization at the same time the false stories and social media posts about Snyder began to leak out.
But it would not appear Bezos has any ill will toward Snyder, as he has spent time with the 56-year-old since he purchased a 27,000-square-foot mansion in Washington in 2016 and spent $12 million to renovate it, according to CBS Sports.
At this point, the main link between Bezos and the WFT is a mention of his attorney in a defamation lawsuit, but, considering that league sources say Bezos is “close with several current league owners” and could literally afford to buy every team in the league, the connection between the departing Amazon CEO and the NFL’s most dysfunctional franchise is worth noting.
They didn’t want Donald Trump, but NFL owners would likely be more than willing to welcome a less controversial mogul into their ranks. And Bezos will need a hobby …
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