Latest news with #JoshHarris
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
'I wouldn't have changed the name': Trump talks Washington Commanders nickname
The Washington Commanders are never going back to their former nickname. It hasn't stopped the world's most powerful man from making his opinion on the matter known. To be fair, President Donald Trump was asked Sunday about the Commanders' stadium plans within the District of Columbia – and whether the team should have changed its name at all. 'Well, you want me to make a controversial statement? I would,' Trump replied. 'I wouldn't have changed the name. It just doesn't have the same, it doesn't have the same ring to me. 'But, you know, winning can make everything sound good. So if they win, all of a sudden the Commanders sounds good, but I wouldn't have changed the name.' From 2020-22, the team went by the "Washington Football Team" after it retired the former nickname, which many Native Americans believe is a slur, before becoming the "Commanders." Franchise names have been an issue not just in the NFL, but across other sports. Major League Baseball's Cleveland Guardians also changed their name for its reflection about Native American communities. The Commanders, however, have been adamant that changing the name back is not a priority. What did Donald Trump say about Commanders' RFK Stadium plans? Trump hosted Commanders owner Josh Harris and commissioner Roger Goodell in the Oval Office to announce the 2027 NFL draft being held on the National Mall in D.C. Since then, the president has been asked about the deal between the local government and the team to build a new stadium near its former RFK site within D.C. The deal still requires approval of the D.C. Council, and members of the group have cost concerns regarding the amount of taxpayer dollars (nearly $1 billion). "We'll see what happens. Looking at the deal, you know, I don't blame them," Trump said. "They're very important pieces of property. It's a great piece of property. But if I can help (the NFL) out I will." Despite Congress handing D.C. control of the land, Trump said the federal government "ultimately controls" it. "It'll be a great place for the NFL to be in," Trump said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump says he wouldn't have changed Washington team nickname
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
NFL Owner Buys Jayden Daniels Card For $500,000
NFL Owner Buys Jayden Daniels Card For $500,000 originally appeared on The Spun. Trading cards are back in a big way as of late and so are the Washington Commanders. After drafting Jayden Daniels second overall last April, the rookie QB led the franchise to a 12-5 record its first NFC Championship appearance since 1991 — giving the team more playoff wins in one season than they've had since the turn of the millennium. Advertisement Due to his early on-field success, Josh Roth and Jacob Ramos of Rothcards bought a rare 1-of-1 2024 Daniels Panini Prizm card for roughly $300,000 which they showed off at this year's Fanatics Fest. And it caught the attention of Commanders owner Josh Harris. Per The Athletic, Harris asked Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin who in attendance had the rarest Jayden Daniels, and when Roth and Ramos came forward he two sides quickly negotiated a deal worth half a million dollars (even though they were asked for four times that). "It was such an experience to be on stage with just everyone. It really happened so fast," Ramos told the publication. "Moments like that are timeless." Advertisement Oct 20, 2024; Landover, Maryland, USA; Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris stands on the field prior to the game against the Carolina Panthers at Northwest Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-Imagn Images© Geoff Burke-Imagn Images Daniels reportedly signed the card afterwards and Harris plans to display it at Northwest Stadium this season. Of course $500,000 is light work for a man who purchased his NFL team for a record $6.05 billion in 2023. And that number is only going to go up if Daniels and Washington can replicate this kind of success in the years to come. Related: There's Growing Push For Barron Trump To Enlist In U.S. Army NFL Owner Buys Jayden Daniels Card For $500,000 first appeared on The Spun on Jun 23, 2025 This story was originally reported by The Spun on Jun 23, 2025, where it first appeared.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Trump wants to force the Commanders to revert to a racist name. It's unlikely he can
Haven't the fans of the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians suffered enough? For decades, each team had to endure the twin indignities of on-field futility and off-field scorn. Until last year, when they enjoyed a resurgence under rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, the Washington NFL team had won exactly only one playoff game in the 21st century. Cleveland's baseball team have been competitive this century, but they once went 41 years between playoff appearances (from 1954 to 1995) and came out on the losing end in the 'whose drought will end?' World Series of 2016, in which the Chicago Cubs won the championship for the first time in 108 years at the expense of Cleveland, whose epoch without a World Series win now stands at 77 years. Off the field, both teams faced backlash over their names. Cleveland were known as the Indians until 2022, when a name change to 'Guardians' went into effect. Washington had a more disturbing name referring to Native Americans until they became the 'Washington Football Team' in 2020 and landed on 'Commanders' from 2022 onwards. The Commanders took another step forward in 2023, when a consortium led by Josh Harris bought the team from Dan Snyder, one of the most reviled team owners in NFL history. Coincidentally – or perhaps not given Snyder's failings – the Commanders reached the conference championship last season for the first time since 1991. But Donald Trump, whose quest to make the intellectual and public-service classes miserable is a cornerstone of his presidency, has decided that these two fanbases need more suffering. On Sunday he insisted on social media that the teams should reclaim the names they dropped after decades of pressure. His reasoning, as far as it could be discerned from his typically stream-of-consciousness post, was that changing the names back would be respectful to the many Native Americans who found them offensive in the first place. 'Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them,' Trump wrote. The first thing to say is that Trump often decides to fire off a broadside at sports, when he is looking to distract from other problems, rile up his base or target groups he has contempt for. See, for example, his attacks on the US women's national team, Black NFL players who knelt for the national anthem or transgender athletes. The second thing to say is that Trump is unlikely to get anywhere with his demands. The Guardians immediately squashed any notion of reverting to 'Indians,' and Trump has no leverage to force them to do his bidding. The Commanders' situation is a bit more complicated, but Trump is unlikely to prevail there, either. Trump has implied that he will force the Commanders to revert to their old racist name if they want to be allowed to move back to the District of Columbia from their current home in suburban Maryland. The problem is that Joe Biden, in his last weeks as US president, signed a bill transferring the site in question from the federal government to the DC city government. Barring any creative legal maneuvers, the most Trump could do would be to attack the municipal government on other fronts as an indirect way of putting pressure on the Commanders. The team's potential new home in DC is occupied by the decaying ruins of RFK Stadium, where the Team Now Known As the Commanders played from 1961 to 1996. The Washington Nationals also played there from 2005 to 2007, when Nationals Park was completed. Other than that, the stadium was the home of Major League Soccer's DC United and other soccer events until 2017, when DC United moved to their new home at Audi Field. Even before United moved out, the stadium was renowned for its decrepit state, though raccoons occasionally found it hospitable. RFK Stadium, though, had many things going for it. It was named for Robert F Kennedy, a distinguished attorney general who may well have been elected president in 1968 had he not been assassinated while campaigning. The stadium had history. It was also an easy walk from a Metro station. The Commanders' current home, now known as Northwest Stadium, has none of those things. It is a stadium devoid of charm, notable wins by the home team, and good transportation options – even by the standards of a city with brutalist architecture, sporadically successful sports teams, and traffic obstacles. Shortly before his death, then-owner Jack Kent Cooke convinced the US Postal Service to accept that the stadium's zip code would be known under the placename 'Raljon,' a combination of his sons' names (Ralph and John), prompting Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser to quip that everyone was lucky that his kids weren't named Peter and Ennis. At one time, the Washington NFL team had a long waitlist for season tickets. While the number of people on that waitlist at any given time is heavily disputed, it's certainly true that the typical fan could not simply buy season tickets without spending a few years waiting for the opportunity. By the end of Snyder's reign, even with Northwest Stadium's capacity reduced from 91,000 to about 62,000, the waitlist no longer existed. So a return to the old RFK site would be very attractive to the Commanders and their fans. But they have other options as well in the suburbs and exurbs, and even without presidential opposition, some local politicians have raised objections to the city's proposed $1bn investment in a new stadium. And that issue leads back to the federal government – which has the power to force DC to slash its budget, even if local tax revenues are sufficient to cover it – and occasionally threatens to do so. So Trump and his allies in Congress could, in theory, cut the DC budget out of spite if the Commanders refuse to change their name. But name changes and stadium development take a long time, and the clock on Trump's tenure in office is ticking. By any other name, Washington's football team had been in the DC metro area for close to 80 years before Trump's arrival, and it will be around long after he has packed up for Mar-a-Lago or another destination for good.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Why have Nottingham Forest taken out an £80m loan from Apollo Management?
Nottingham Forest have taken a loan of £80million ($108m) with Apollo Management, a global asset management company based in New York. It is the company's first venture into Premier League finance. The three-year loan, which was secured in December 2024, will operate with an interest rate of 8.75 per cent. Advertisement For Forest, £55million of the loan was used to refinance an existing debt with Rights and Media Funding Group (RMF) as a potential cost-saving exercise. It is secured against the entirety of the club and its assets, the most significant of which is the City Ground. It is not an unusual practice for clubs to secure finance in such a manner. In fact, it is a reasonably regular occurrence; fleeting star players aside, a club's most valuable asset tends to be its home, so that's what gets put up as security when large tranches of funding are obtained. But, when it involves a headline figure of such a high number, it might raise some questions among fans. Which The Athletic attempts to answer here… Apollo — or Apollo Global Management — is a global asset management company, headquartered in Midtown Manhattan. Founded in 1990, Apollo had, as of the end of 2024, assets under management of $751billion, ranking them as the 28th largest asset management firm in the world, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. Apollo was co-founded by Josh Harris, now a shareholder at Crystal Palace. Harris left Apollo in 2022, though retained a six per cent shareholding in the firm as of April this year. Naturally, the firm's business is widely diversified, with various companies in operation. Of the £80million loaned to Forest last December, £25m is owed to Apollo Debt Solutions (ADS) BDC (the latter standing for 'Business Development Company'), a subsidiary of the Apollo group. Based on filings by Forest's holding company, NF Football Investments, the remaining £55m is held by Apollo Investment Management Europe, a Luxembourg-based entity. While this is Apollo's first known direct foray into football, the Financial Times reported this week that the investment firm is in talks to buy a stake in Atletico Madrid. Advertisement Which isn't to say the firm is not already active in sport. ADS' loan book includes two term loans, totalling $172million, given to Endeavor, owners of World Wrestling Entertainment and the Ultimate Fighting Championship via their ownership of TKO Group. A further $52m was loaned to TKO earlier this year, while there's another $5m due from Delta 2, a Luxembourg-based company that holds debt for Formula One. There's an existing link to football too. Also on ADS' list of investments at the end of March was a £40m loan to Sports Invest Holdings Limited, a business set up last May by prominent football advisor, Kia Joorabchian. Rights and Media Funding Limited is a Macclesfield-based company that lends to the sports and entertainment industries. RMF loaned Forest £55million in two tranches. First, in August 2022, £45m repayable by July 30 2025, bearing interest at 7.5 per cent plus the Bank of England (BOE) base rate (then 1.75 per cent; now 4.25 per cent), then a further £10m in October 2023, again repayable by July 30 2025, this time bearing interest at 6.45 per cent plus the BOE base rate. Both loans have now been repaid in full and were filed as such on January 6 this year. Forest aren't the first club to have received funding from RMF, whose most high-profile lending was to Everton before the club's takeover by The Friedkin Group last December. At one stage, that debt sat at £225m, though it was all repaid following the takeover. As well as Everton, RMF has previously loaned money to West Ham (varying amounts between 2017 and 2020), and a cohort of 11 clubs in Spain. The lender provided €67million in December 2020 in a joint-financing venture that looked to shore up liquidity during the Covid-19 pandemic. In July 2021, RMF loaned Valencia €51m over five years, before organising a separate €20m, over four and a half years, to the Mestalla club in January 2024. Per RMF's balance sheet at the end of June 2024, the company was owed loans in the region of £288million, the vast majority of which looks to have been amounts due from Everton and Forest. Both clubs are now free of debt to RMF. The £80million loaned from Apollo to Forest is senior debt, meaning it takes priority when it comes to repayment; in the unlikely event Forest were heading out of business, Apollo would be at the front of the resultant queue. The loan has a three-year term, due for repayment on December 20 2027, though there is provision for that to be extended a further two years. It incurs 8.75 per cent interest annually or, based on the £80m balance, £7m per year. That was around half Forest's total matchday income in the 2023-24 season (the latest for which we have figures). Advertisement £55m of the Apollo loan has been used to repay the amounts due to RMF. Based on most recent interest rates, those RMF loans were incurring £6.4m in annual interest, so this refinancing — now a common occurrence in football — works out cheaper in a sense; applying the Apollo interest rate to £55m gives an annual charge of £4.8m. Of course, Forest have borrowed above and beyond their previous debt to RMF, taking out a further £25m this time around. It is unclear what the additional funding is to be used for. It is difficult to read too much into the timing of the loan, beyond the fact that the restructuring of the debt should ultimately reduce costs for the club. With those RMF loans due for repayment at the end of July, it makes sense that the club looked elsewhere — successfully — for cheaper financing. The club have declined to comment. Debt has long been a dirty word in football, but it need not be; the only way debt becomes overly problematic is if clubs are unable to service it, or it unduly impacts their ability to spend elsewhere. In that sense, Forest shouldn't have too much new to be concerned about in the immediate future. While their debt burden has increased by £25million, the more favourable rate — and a fixed one at that — means interest costs have only increased by around £0.6m annually. That is, however, simply relative to the club's previous position. £7m in annual interest isn't too bad for a club in the Premier League and the commensurate wealth that brings (The Athletic estimates Forest earned £157.5m in domestic prize money alone last season), but should a bad season result in relegation, interest quickly becomes a much bigger problem. An 8.75 per cent interest rate is hardly cheap, though it's also not as hefty as some other clubs are paying — including Forest's own recent payments to RMF. Rates are high generally and a potential drop into the Championship, deemed a possibility for all but a minority of clubs, makes it difficult to obtain low-rate lending. A positive is that Forest have now locked in the rate on this tranche of funding, so are no longer subject to interest rate swings and have certainty over upcoming payments — though, of course, that could turn to a negative if rates fall in the future. Advertisement Of greater concern is whether Forest have anything to show for it. If the money has only been used to cover ongoing costs, that's much less desirable than pouring it into infrastructure; for example, the imminent works at the City Ground. Debt just to fund existing operations always raises the question of how it will eventually be repaid. Eight Premier League clubs paid more in interest than Forest in 2023-24, some substantially so, but several of those did it to build new or improved facilities. There's also the important point that all of the club being used as security precludes Forest from putting its assets up against any other funding, such as whatever may be required to pay for those City Ground works. That money will, presumably, have to come from the pockets of owner Evangelos Marinakis. The repayment date for the Apollo loan isn't until December 2027, but could be extended to 2029, and it may be that Forest simply refinance again. In the immediate term, the lending doesn't look overly risky or expensive — at least relative to what went before. But finances at Forest, like most clubs outside a handful, will remain reliant on on-field success.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Washington D.C. mayor doesn't expect President Trump to block Commanders stadium deal after calling for name change
Even after President Donald Trump weighed in with multiple social media posts on Sunday threatening to block the deal, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser isn't worried about the Commanders' return to the city. Bowser, speaking Monday after Trump called for the Commanders to revert back to their old nickname that was widely seen as offensive, doesn't expect they'll have to worry about Trump or Congress intervening in the Commanders' new stadium deal. While the D.C. Council still needs to approve the deal officially, that could be done in a matter of weeks. 'I don't think that's an eventuality we have to plan for,' Bowser told ESPN of Trump blocking the deal. 'What we have to do as a city is do our part. And so our part is we've come up with a great deal, we have a great plan, we've done the community outreach, now is the time for the council to approve it.' Trump made multiple posts Sunday calling on both the Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians to revert back to their old team nicknames. The Commanders rebranded from the 'Washington Redskins' in 2020, and the Guardians retired their old 'Indians' moniker and the 'Chief Wahoo' logo ahead of the 2022 season. Both team names and the old Cleveland logo drew plenty of criticism in the years leading up to the change. The Commanders have not yet addressed Trump's posts, though new team owner Josh Harris has been clear that the team won't be going back to their old name. The Guardians shut the idea down on Sunday. Though he didn't get into specifics, Trump threatened to block the Commanders' new stadium deal if they didn't change their name. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that Trump's threat was real, though it's unclear what he could realistically do on that front. The Commanders announced plans earlier this year for a $3.7 billion deal to build a stadium on the old Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium site in Washington. The team is set to contribute $2.7 billion of that deal, and is looking for the rest to come from the city, along with retail shops, housing and more on the property. The goal is to open for the 2030 season. "Let me be clear, we're on the 1-yard line and it's time to get over the line," Bowser said, via ESPN. "I can't even imagine having to start all over on this. There's nobody waiting in the wings with $2.7 billion. And so this stadium is a catalyst and it will attract other investments. Any impediment to it getting done should be discouraged. 'When you're on the 1-yard line, you want to carry it over, right? That's all you want. No fumbles, no interceptions, let's just get it over the line. And that's what we're focused on." As for the stadium deal itself, Bowser insists that she thinks Trump knows it is a good one for everyone involved. 'This is what I believe,' she said. "I've had the opportunity to speak on a couple of different occasions with the President about this site and about our team. And I can say this without equivocation, he is a Jayden Daniels fan and he said himself and the presser we were at, that this is probably the best site of any site he's seen for a stadium. I have to think that that's what I've heard him say and that's what we'll stick with."
