Nearly 18 months after Tom Brady agreed to buy a stake in the Raiders, NFL owners have finally approved the measure. The all-time QB great-turned-broadcaster is now a part-owner of the AFC West franchise, NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport tweets.
Brady’s ownership effort receiving the necessary 24 votes Tuesday both finishes his long-running bid to become a part-owner and ensures he will not make a comeback as a player. Brady, 47, had teased the idea as being on his radar — a late-season comeback, that is — but owners were not open to the idea of the 23-year veteran being a part-owner who also plays for a team. The current lead FOX analyst is OK with this and will move into the unique position of being an NFL owner who is also a broadcaster.
Brady is in at roughly 5% of the Raiders, with SI.com’s Albert Breer noting another 5% going to business partner/Knighthead Capital Management co-founder Tom Wagner. With Wagner part of Brady’s group, the latter technically holds a 10% stake in the Las Vegas NFL franchise. Brady had recently raised his ownership bid, doing enough to move this journey into the end zone.
Providing financial details on this transaction, Ben Fisher and Austin Karp of the Sports Business Journal report the deal will see Brady and Wagner pay $220MM in equity along with $24MM which will go to the league’s other owners as a condition of the franchise’s move to Vegas. The Raiders’ valuation for the purpose of Brady and Wagner’s addition is roughly $3.5 billion, per the report. Forbes’ most recent valuation checked in at $6.7 billion.
Hall of Famer Richard Seymour, who was believed to have been separated from the Brady stake, is a part-Raiders owner at 0.5%, Breer adds. Seymour did not need to wait nearly as long as Brady did on the ownership front, with a few owners meetings coming and going without the matter being part of an official discussion. That changed Tuesday.
Mark Davis agreed to sell a stake to Brady in May 2023; the two were already partners in the WNBA, with Brady buying a piece of Davis’ Las Vegas Aces franchise. Owners took issue with Brady’s stake price and then expressed concerns about the conflict of interest FOX’s first-team color commentator also owning part of a team. The price issue was ironed out months ago, and going into this season, the NFL imposed a round of Brady-only restrictions that prevent him from attending team facilities or taking part in player and coach broadcast meetings.
The restrictions certainly limit Brady’s ability to do his FOX job, but he did not back down from this Raiders ownership pursuit. As a result, Brady will continue to broadcast without going through the usual pregame work his contemporaries do. Owners’ concern also included Brady appearing at a Raiders practice late last season, putting the eventual limitations in motion, but the recently retired quarterback had said he planned to play a passive role as an owner. That also may be subject to change.
Brady should be expected to have a prominent voice as a Raiders part-owner, an NFL source informed the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vincent Bonsignore. He was linked as being involved in the Raiders’ HC and GM searches, though not to the extent Seymour eventually was. If Brady indeed becomes an integral figure in Raiders football decisions, his FOX role may come under additional scrutiny. And Tom Telesco‘s GM power may be conceivably worth questioning. For now, however, the former Patriots and Buccaneers passer is set for dual NFL citizenship of sorts.
A Brady effort to become a player/owner — with Sean Payton as the coach — for the Dolphins produced significant punishment for the AFC East franchise, though at that point, a player/owner effort was not completely off the table. A rule passed last summer, in the wake of Lionel Messi being given equity in Miami’s MLS club, now nixes any NFL player/owner crusades. As a result, Brady’s playing career will officially end.
The 49ers had pursued Brady after his second retirement, seeking to have him start and mentor Brock Purdy. Brady turning down his hometown team, which presented a loaded roster that eventually pushed the Chiefs to the brink of double overtime in Super Bowl LVIII with Purdy at the controls, effectively confirmed he was done playing. While he unretired once and made mention of doing so in an emergency circumstance again this offseason, the book — barring an about-face on an ownership bid he has spent the better part of the past two years pushing for — is closed on Brady the player.
It will now be interesting to see if Brady indeed takes on an active role with the Raiders. Seymour, Brady’s Patriots teammate who played for the Raiders from 2009-12, has been a Davis confidant for a while and was part of the team’s interview process that produced the Telesco-Antonio Pierce pairing. A Hall of Fame defensive lineman, Seymour will now work with his most prominent former teammate in Vegas.
Let the tampering begin!
Conspiracy theorists are likely saying that the NFL is trying to sneak this news nugget in behind the 2 big trades today. And for a change, they might be right.
There is only one conspiracy theorist that the NFL really needs to be concerned about…link to youtube.com
Peyton may have the ‘Manning cast,’ but Tom owns a team and always one-ups PM.
Except Payton Manning is actually a likable guy. Brady has the personality of a Ken doll
Maybe your Ken doll just didn’t like you
This should really get him out of the booth. It makes it impossible for him to prepare for games the way any other broadcaster does, and he’s already not all that well suited to the job. Give us Olsen back and let Brady walk into that mess.
couldnt agree more…def conflict of interest no matter which games hes an analyst for — and listening to him talk is like listening to bacon sizzle
Hey, let’s not say anything rash about the sound of sizzling bacon.
One might be rasher than the other…
Except that Bacon is good.
Willing to bet that Mr. Davis will place the funds in an escrow account to be used to pay off the estate tax when his Mom dies.
Brady isn’t going to help with the cash crunch the Raiders are always operating under – as he brings no outsider money to the table. The best kind of NFL owner is one that has other companies that can be used as a source of cash for fulfilling league-mandated financial arrangements, which is one of the things that has always hampered Davis’ operation of the team.
Why not. It’s Brady’s league, right? The rest of us just kind of, well, exist around it. Why shouldn’t he always get what he wants?
I’m sure he’ll be every bit as effective a team owner as Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter.
I watched the game Tom did the other day. I was mildly bored. Tom did or said nothing that impressed me. He has a drone on voice that after a bit sounds like Charlie Browns parents. For as bad as he is I dont see how he is worth the headache. The hoops the league teams and players have to jump through. Tom be an owner give back the money you got from FOX sit in the owners boxes at the games and enjoy. That will help us enjoy the game you weee supposed to do.
Fox should use this as a get out of a dumb decision card.