Daniel Snyder is the perfect example of a fundamental truth: The only thing better than being rich and famous is being rich.
Snyder had become rich and notorious until the NFL forced him out of Club Oligarch. While many owners were believed to be inclined to keep him around despite allegations of misconduct and mistreatment of employees, the tipping point arrived when the other owners had reason to believe Snyder may have been picking their pockets, by allegedly diverting ticket revenue from Commanders games (40 percent of which are shared with the rest of the league) to non-Commanders events at the stadium he owned.
Whatever the reason(s), some owners who were previously concerned about creating a standard that could potentially be used against them agreed that Snyder had to go. And in the three years since he left, Snyder has become (as explained by Mark Maske of Front Office Sports) “invisible.”
In 2023, Snyder sold the Commanders to a group led by Josh Harris for a then-record $6.05 billion. (That record will soon be shattered, when a group led by Vinod Khosla acquires the Seahawks for $9.612 billion.)
Snyder had been linked to potential investment in an English soccer club. That never happened. And he has completely disconnected from any relationship he made in more than 20 years of franchise ownership.
“I don’t think anybody is in touch with him about anything,” an unnamed NFL team official told Maske. “I don’t know who he hangs out with. I don’t know who he talks to. Certainly nobody in the NFL is talking to him.”
Snyder and his wife have relocated to London, with no apparent plan to return to the United States.
“He’ll never be back,” an unnamed Snyder associate told Maske. “In London, they . . . don’t bother him.”
That said, Snyder hovers over former Raiders coach Jon Gruden’s lawsuit against the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell. Gruden’s case arises from the weaponization of confidential emails harvested during Beth Wilkinson’s investigation of the team. A small universe of people had access to them.
Snyder, given that he owned the network from which the emails were gathered, was necessarily one of them.
And with Snyder out of the country, getting his testimony in the Gruden case will entail a complicated and cumbersome process.
But Gruden seems to be very motivated to get to the bottom of who ordered the Code Red against him, resulting in his forced resignation from the Raiders in October 2021. His lawyers presumably will do whatever it takes to get Snyder under oath, so that he can be grilled about any knowledge he may have regarding the leaks that led to Gruden’s ouster.
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