Does Jeff Bezos love soccer greater than newspapers? This query arises within the nation’s capital because the NFL franchise hits the block.
There may be a growing rumor that Amazon’s billionaire founder wants to pave the way in which to buy the Washington Commanders by selling the Washington Post – speculation fueled last month by a leaked video of publisher Fred Ryan revealing plans for layoffs at an unruly town hall meeting.
Bezos’ problem is reportedly that the commanders owner, Dan Snyder, remains to be sore over a series of articles by this newspaper that expose the team’s toxic management culture where bosses, including Snyder, allegedly enabled sexual harassment.
Some even imagine that Snyder suspects that Bezos, who bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, encouraged a difficult relationship in 2020 in an attempt to force him to sell the team to him.
Last week, Bezos fueled fears of impending layoffs on the Washington Post during an ungainly visit to the newsroom. A source close to the situation said Bezos told senior staff on the newspaper in private meetings that he had no plans to sell the paper.
Nevertheless, one logical competitor believes the Washington Post is up on the market and plans to bid, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said, refusing to name the competitor. A second source, who buys and sells newspapers, said that they had also heard that the newspaper may very well be up for grabs.
“I believe Bezos’s people could go to Dan and say, as a gesture of goodwill, ‘We’re selling a newspaper,'” a source close to the situation said. “I believe with Dan it will be very useful.”
Meanwhile, Front Office Sports reported last Tuesday that Bank of America, hired by Snyder to bid on the commanders, “remains to be courting Bezos — at the same time as there are indications that Snyder doesn’t want to sell” to the Amazon founder.
Bezos didn’t hire an investment banker to sell the Washington Post, nor did he make it clear that he was actually on the market, the source added. Not one of the sources are close to former Recent York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who, according to a December 23 Axios report, is fascinated with buying the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post.
A Bezos spokesman said the Washington Post was not on the market. A spokesman for the Journal, whose owner News Corp. also owns the Recent York Post, said the paper will not be on the market.
Last week, reports surfaced that Commanders had accepted first-round bids from potential buyers, and that Bezos – who was reportedly in talks with Jay-Z to join forces for a buyout – was not amongst them.
Bezos has been reticent concerning the commanders, except in a November CNN interview where he said soccer is his “favorite sport” and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez chimed in: “I like soccer – I’m just going to throw it on the market.
Within the meantime, sports journalists have been keen to speak on behalf of struggling commanders owner Dan Snyder – and according to reports, his attitude towards Bezos is decidedly less enthusiastic.
“Not only have I been told that Bezos hasn’t made a suggestion, but people have been telling me that the Snyder family has absolutely little interest in selling to Bezos,” JP Finlay, who handles executives for NBC Sports, tweeted last weekend. This was in response to reports that the best bid in the primary round was $6.3 billion – lower than the $7 billion Snyder is reportedly searching for.
It was also from an unnamed source said Peter King of NBC Sports in November: “It’s never going to occur. Dan Snyder hates Washington Post. There is not any way he’s selling the owner of that paper.
Dan Froomkin, editor of the non-profit organization Press Watch, notes that the Amazon mogul – currently the fourth richest man on the earth with a net value of $ 120 billion, according to Forbes — is understood for his libertarian political beliefs, which have long been an ungainly fit for the Washington Post.
“I can easily imagine higher owners for the Washington Post than Jeff Bezos,” Froomkin said.
in 2018 The Washington Post raised an eyebrow when he criticized the “corporate tax” bill introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders, dubbed the “Stop BEZOS Act”. Bezos posted the article on Twitter. Last May, Bezos battled with Joe Biden on Twitter over taxes, demanding the federal government investigate the president’s claims that low corporate taxes fueled inflation.
Still, Froomkin added: “I can imagine worse owners for the Post much more easily, and that may be a national and journalistic tragedy, and a whole betrayal of the assurances Bezos made to Don Graham when he bought the Post in 2013 that he would do what’s right for the post office.
For his part, Bezos has said publicly that owning a newspaper was never his dream. Former Post owner Donald Graham asked Bezos to buy it in 2013 to ensure financial stability and speed up online growth. While the paper grew rapidly under Bezos early on, bolstering its staff and reach, it was reportedly on the right track to lose money in 2022 after years of gains as readership dwindled after the tip of the Trump administration.
“I do know that once I’m 90, it’s going to be one among the things I will be most pleased with, that I took part within the Washington Post and helped it through a really difficult transition,” Bezos said within the 2021 book Invent and Wander a group of his writings.
Now, Bezos’s attachment to the newspaper could also be weaker than ever, said Edward Wasserman, a journalism professor on the University of California, Berkeley, who notes that Bezos’s summer spat with Biden on Twitter drew criticism on the time.
“Bezos belatedly realized the responsibilities of owning The Washington Post – if he didn’t understand it was going to muzzle him, he realizes it now,” Wasserman said. “It might make sense if he backed out of it.”