Billionaire Josh Harris would have offered $5 billion for the Broncos, if he’d known that bid would have won the day. It’s going to take more than $5 billion to get the Commanders, and so Harris is bringing in reinforcements.
Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports that Mitchell Rales, another billionaire (aren’t they all at this point?), has joined the Harris bid.
Rales and Harris will “partner” in the effort. It remains to be seen whether Harris or Rales will be the controlling owner, and which one will be the more silent (and definitely less powerful) sidekick.
Rales, a Pittsburgh native who founded the Danaher Corporation, reportedly has a net worth of $5.8 billion. He recently donated $1.9 billion to The Glenstone Foundation.
Rales made a pivot toward philanthropy after suffering a near-death experience in Russia 26 years ago. He was fishing with friends. The helicopter they were using stopped in a village to refuel. While they were there, a nearby plane exploded.
“We were 10 feet away,” Rales told the New York Times in 2013. “Flames shot more than two stories high. I was lucky to have escaped. I left Russia barefoot with only a torn T-shirt and gym shorts. From then on it was no longer about making money.”
If he buys the Commanders, it may not be about making money — but he will definitely make money. It’s impossible to not make money in today’s NFL.
Commanders fans would still view it as the ultimate act of charity, if it delivers them once and for all from Daniel Snyder.
Snyder actually first emerged in the bidding for the team as the partner of Howard Milstein, who would have been the lead owner. When they failed to secure the necessary approval to buy the team from the estate of Jack Kent Cooke, Snyder put his own group together and bought the team.
It’s a day that has lived in infamy for all fans of the team, and it seems to finally be moving toward a fresh start, with the vague hope that the new boss isn’t the same as the old boss.
At this point, it couldn’t get much worse.