After 18 months, finally this Tuesday at the NFL owners’ Fall Meeting, it was approved that Tom Brady buy 5% ownership of the Las Vegas Raiders, whose principal shareholder is Mark Davis.
The agreement between Davis and Brady, who are also partners in the ownership of the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA, has been ready since April of last year, but the NFL had not put it on the table for a vote at the owners' meetings (which occur four times a year) due to various questions regarding the entry as a shareholder of the player considered the best in history.
This Tuesday, a vote was held in Atlanta and all 32 team owners unanimously approved, according to Albert Breer from Sports Illustrated.
Thanks to the agreement, Tom Brady will enter the ownership of the Las Vegas Raiders with 5%; his partner Tom Wagner (they share ownership of Birmingham City in the English second division) will have another 5%, and former Patriots player Richard Seymour acquired 0.5%.
Why was there so much questioning of the agreement between Brady and the Raiders?
One of the main doubts of the rest of the NFL owners was whether TB12 would receive a special "discount" from Mark Davis, as different versions of journalists pointed out that the former quarterback and his partners would pay $175 million for 10.5% of a team that, according to Forbes, is worth 6.7 billion dollars.
But the main criticisms of the business with Tom Brady were due to the conflict of interest because of his role as a commentator for NFL games for FOX, a job he started this year and which earns him an annual salary of $37.5 million.
To facilitate his entry as the owner of the Raiders, the league decided to impose severe restrictions on his work as a commentator, such as the prohibition of attending production meetings, accessing team facilities, or talking to players and coaches before the games he is scheduled to analyze.
The goal is to prevent, as one of the owners of the Raiders, from having access to the secrets of other teams.
In addition to that, he will not be able to criticize referees or other NFL teams, which are the same rules that apply to other league shareholders.
These restrictions have been applied since the beginning of the season exclusively to Brady and not to the rest of his broadcasting team, which includes play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi.