Josh Harris’s $6.05 billion deal to purchase the Washington Commanders from Daniel Snyder includes an “earnout,” a structure that would provide Snyder with a deferred payment of an amount contingent on the franchise reaching specified financial benchmarks, according to five people with knowledge of the terms of the sale.
The earnout represents a relatively small but perhaps meaningful portion of the overall sale price. Its inclusion in the deal explains, in part, why people familiar with the deliberations of the NFL finance committee last week described the sale agreement between Harris and Snyder as unusually complex.
The finance committee raised issues during its 2½-hour meeting last week in New York and continues to have concerns about Harris’s deal. One person with knowledge of the committee’s conversations said this week that the amount of debt in the deal is, in the committee’s view, significantly above the NFL’s $1.1 billion limit for team acquisitions.
