FedEx, the global shipping company that has sponsored the home field of the Washington Commanders since 1999, dropped a bomb of its own earlier this week when the company ended its naming rights agreement with the team two years early.
While some headlines are intimating that the organization was “blindsided” by the termination of the what was billed as a $205 million sponsorship when it was announced, I think owner Josh Harris should be elated that it’s over.
The FedEx deal is tied to former owner Dan Snyder and a period of dismal failure on the football field. It wasn’t long ago that the Fortune 500 company threatened to pull the sponsorship if Snyder didn’t change the franchise’s name, so FedEx gets to wash that taste out of its mouth too. But no party gets to walk away from a deal like this one without paying a breakup fee, so the organization won’t be hurt in the wallet while it searches for a new name sponsor in time for the start of the 2023 NFL season.
There are other indications that Harris and the organization are already putting plans in motion to put the entire era of playing professional football in Landover, Maryland firmly in the rearview mirror. Also this week, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would transfer the land in Washington, DC where the team’s former home of RFK Stadium is located from the Federal Government to the District of Columbia — a move that will presumably make it easier to demolish the decaying stadium in the city’s Southeastern corner and make way for the Commanders to return to DC.
If ownership does everything right, and there’s every indication that Harris and his partners know exactly what they’re doing, the Commanders could be playing in a new stadium in the city by the end of the decade. At that point, all that would remain to erase Snyder completely from the team’s history would be another name change. Given how anxious the NFL was to see Snyder gone, I don’t doubt whatever Harris wants will be given swift approval.