The Kevin Sheehan Show - Can't Shake Snyder's Shadow

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

Kevin opened today with thoughts on the Washington Commanders' future in light of the latest....the letter from the House Oversight/Reform Committee to the FTC. Howard Gutman joined the show to break down the latest as well.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Cheyenne Show. Here's Kevin. Howard Gutman's going to be on the show today. Most of you now who listen to the podcast know who Howard is. He has really been a massive help in walking us through each of these scandals,

each of these reports related to the Washington football team. Howard will be with us for the final two segments of the show. we will walk through each of these allegations from Jason Friedman. There's more to the letter that was sent by the House Oversight and Reform Committee to the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. But we'll walk through the new one, which is the, you know, holding back the refunds to the tune of $5 million worth of refunds owed to season ticket holders when they put their refundable security deposits in, you know, and then the other one, which is concealing

revenue from the league that's owed the league based on. the sale of tickets to games. We will get Howard's thoughts on all of it. Look, I'll say what I said yesterday. I really haven't changed my mind. Tommy thinks that this is a got's to go situation. God, I hope he's right. My sense of it is, is that holding back refunds

or using refunds as float to generate more money, but in this case, just holding them back altogether. It may not be the most uncommon of business practices, maybe not even in the league. The concealing of revenue, you know, if he ripped off his fellow owners, that's a real big deal, but is it possible that he's not the only one that's skimmed? I just wouldn't wager on him being ousted by this. I'm not saying that I would wager that he sticks around.

I'm hoping that this leads to something, and it feels like we're nearing that territory of him potentially being ousted. But I wouldn't wager on it. We'll see what Howard thinks coming up in the next two segments. Ben Standig tweeted out the following yesterday. Ben, of course, a good friend and a writer at the Athletic, and he's got a really good podcast as well, Standig Room Only. He tweeted out, Ron Rivera so badly wants the past to be the past, but by now even he must recognize that's not happening anytime soon

with Dan Snyder casting a long shadow. We know that Rivera has asked since the end of the season in various interviews that we, the media, and the fans, not focus on the past anymore. Focus on the future. Focus on football. And he's grown tired of having to answer questions about all of the other stuff.

He said to Ben Standig in a column that Ben wrote in early February, This was before, by the way, the February 2nd unveiling of the new name. He said, once February 2nd comes, we most certainly are going to go forward. I don't want to get pulled backward. This is a chance for us to step beyond the shadow of what we've had to deal with and really start fresh, start new. It'll be an opportunity, closed quote. The problem is that shadow, Dan Snyder's shadow, as Ben wrote, is long and it's dark and it's constant. And until he goes, Ron Rivera, Mike Shanahan, Joe Gibbs, Marty Schottenheimer,

Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVeigh, Matt LaFleur, it just won't matter. As long as Dan Snyder owns this team, unless they were to stumble on to the next Peyton Manning or Aaron Rogers or Tom Brady, they'll never win in a sustained fashion. They won't. It's not going to stop us. Tommy, you know, always brings up. What's the point? What's the point? As long as he's here, it won't happen. And we all intellectually understand, you know, big picture, macro, as long as he owns the team, unless there's a quarterback of brilliant Hall of Fame, you know, potential, it's never going to happen. It's not stopping us from having the conversations that we have. Who are they going to take at number 11?

By the way, Mel Kuiper in his recent mock draft this morning has Kyle Hamilton, the safety from Notre Dame falling to 11. I would love that. I love Kyle Hamilton as a player. He is position flexibility guy. We know Ron loves that, and Jack loves that. They love positional flexibility. Kyle Hamilton can play that Buffalo Nickel, or he can play that deep free safety

and single high. He is a beast physically, 6-4, 225. Harrison Smith will be the comp, the former Notre Dame safety who's been in the league forever with Notre Dame, but Kyle Hamilton's actually bigger than Harrison Smith. We'll have those conversations. What are they going to do in the draft? You know, it's Cole Holcomb good enough to play middle linebackers. Should they draft another receiver? We'll talk about Terry McCorn's contract extension. And then, of course, my favorite thing to do, we'll always talk about the games. You know, why to reverse Vera go for that fourth and three when they were up, you know, 10 with four and a half to go. Why didn't he just pun it?

Actually, I'd rather have the conversation about why didn't he go for it? Why wasn't he more aggressive? Why didn't he live up to the riverboat-on label? We'll have those conversations. I love football. You guys love football. But it's the owner and the quarterback. Big picture.

As long as Dan owns the team, it's never, ever going to result in a past that can be overlooked. a shadow that will go away and the results being a sustained year in and year out contender. Never, again, unless they stumble upon Peyton Manning or Aaron Rogers. And then you got a chance. Doesn't mean that they won't have that one year out of three or four or five where they go nine and eight or ten and seven and they play in a wild card game and we think, oh, look, it's all, you know, it's all happening now. The league, as I've mentioned many times in the past, is designed for even the worst-owned franchises to have a good season. But a good season does not make a good franchise.

And Washington is a dreadful franchise as long as Dan Snyder owns it. Now, they've done a lot of things. They've got better people on the business side. Jason Wright, you know, a lot of those guys, Joe Maloney, a lot of those guys and people that they've hired are great. You know, and it's different than it used to be. It's less arrogant. It's more competent.

And I think the football operation is more competent. But Dan's shadow is still there. The owner and the quarterback. You know, the owner's got to go. I don't know if this is going to, this most recent thing will result in him going. I hope it does. Again, I wouldn't bet on it.

But until he's gone, I don't think so. I don't think so. It's just exhausting, isn't it? I mean, I'm going to spend the next two segments talking about the most recent thing, but it is exhausting. I got home yesterday and my wife said, so, is this the one? What are you talking about? What do you mean? What am I talking about?

She said. The thing on Snyder, the thing on the team. Is this the one that's going to get them? I have no idea. I have no idea. And it is exhausting because that's a question we're asking ourselves every few days. Will this be the one? Will that be the one?

Who knows? Howard Gutman will help us with that. Yeah. I was asked recently by somebody, let's just say close to the organization, who reached out to me and said, hey, you were a lifelong fan, and we think a lot of people like you that were a lifelong fan, And we think a lot of people like you that were lifelong fans that lived through the glory years that now profess less passion for the team than you used to have.

We think a lot of your listeners on your podcast and radio show, you know, a lot of people sort of identify with that. And the question was asked of me, what do we need to do to get you guys back? and I just thought about it and I said well my answer used to be just win you just have to win I don't know if that's the answer anymore I think Snyder has to go I think the league knows that the owners can't stand them this is a lucrative market opportunity that is not being taken advantage of. He has embarrassed them at every turn. He is toxic. They don't want them. The town would throw a parade if they ousted him. I still don't know why he wants to own this team, how they could possibly enjoy owning this team. But then I remember, you know, as I've said many times, they're

kind of oblivious, and they don't consider themselves, Dan and Tanya, to be part of the problem. It's always been someone else's fault. But I don't know. I mean, if they go 12 and 5 and they get the quarterback and they have a couple of years in a row with a really good quarterback, a superstar at the position, and they start to win divisions and they start to contend for Super Bowls, will I get the same level of passion back if Snyder still owns the team? I don't think so. I think they're really looking at a different age group now, those that didn't live through the glory years, those that still haven't identified a favorite team yet,

those that will love the new brand and the new name. It doesn't feel like my team anymore. I love talking about football. I love following the team for this purpose and the purposes of our conversations because I enjoy those. But I told this person, I go, I don't know if you can get it. that group back.

I don't know if you'll ever get them invested emotionally like they used to be. And they're football fans, and I'm a football fan. But until Snyder goes, I don't know if any of those people will ever come back. And even if he does go, it still feels like it's a new team with the new name and the new branding. But you know what? I'm open-minded. I'm hopeful that if he goes and they get a new owner, owner and they start to win and we love football and we live in our city that still has an

NFL football team. Maybe I will end up becoming a massive commanders fan just like I was a Redskins fan at some point down the road. Maybe. Okay. I did want to mention one of the one other quick thing. I watched the NBA games last night. Carl Anthony Towns was horrible. Minnesota to won their playing game. Most of you don't care. Carl Anthony Towns is their leading score, leading rebounder. I've never seen somebody so tight in kind of his first legitimate big game. It was a playing game to get into the playoffs, and they won the game. They beat the Clippers. He was terrible. He looked so terrified playing that game. It was odd because I think he's a terrific talent. And the other game, Kyrie Irving, is just incredible.

Kyrie Irving, his ball handling and traffic is just amazing. That series, the Nets and the Celtics, will be one hell of a series coming up. The winner of that series could win the NBA championship. There's your NBA talk for the day. Derek Carr signed a big deal. I don't know if you guys have heard that. Derek Carr gets a three-year, 120, $21.5 million contract extension.

I can do the math on that. That's over $40 million a year. Pretty good on the three-year contract extension. So he is, he also got a no trade clause as part of the deal. So Derek Carr, not that we thought he was going anywhere, especially now that Devante Adams is there. But the Raiders still, I think, are the first. fourth best team in that division. I still think it's the Chiefs, Chargers, and now Broncos that are better overall teams than the Raiders. But what a division that is, top to bottom. The quarterbacks,

Mahomes, Herbert, Wilson, and Derrick Carr, and the AFC West. All right, when we come back, Howard Gutman, we'll get after it on this letter yesterday from the House Oversight and Reform Committee to the Federal Trade Commission. We'll get to that right after. words from a few of our sponsors. All right, let's get to it with Howard Gutman. Howard back with us, of course, Howard, longtime prominent D.C. attorney and Barack Obama's ambassador to Belgium. As well, Howard's been on the podcast many times for pretty much a consistent reason,

even though I know you would much prefer to come on like after a big game and talk about, you know, what you saw in the game the day before, but I need to leverage your expertise on all of these scandals, and you've done a great job with us previously. So, everybody knows, and I've already opened with kind of the overall summary, if you will, of the Committee on Oversight and Reforms letter to the FTC, and, you know, explained everybody that there's like two big buckets of allegations. the one that we kind of knew about, which is the concealing of revenue from the league. And then this new detail that came out of this Jason Friedman testimony,

which is that the team was withholding refunds from roughly 2,000 customers, approximating $5 million worth of refunds that the team referred to as juice, as if they were bookies, Howard. So let's start with kind of your overall thoughts on this and then take each of those allegations separately. Right. So the good news is we have a real measure of clarity. I have a pretty good feel for the question that everybody in D.C. wants to know even more than who's the next president, which is, is Danny going to survive or not? for the first time I have a pretty good feel. Let's take the two buckets. First of all, the security deposits,

and it's not that they withheld them, it's that if you didn't ask for yours back or you didn't ask for yours back the right way, you didn't get it. They didn't volunteer, and so it looks awful. It is awful. Certainly, if you have a security deposit

at the end of your relationship with the client, your entire to have your deposit returned, that looks awful. Unfortunately, that's not going to cost Danny or even the team anything I suspect because it's quite commonplace for the practice. So, for example, if they'd like to take down Danny, they have to take down half of Washington at the Kennedy Center because the Kennedy Center has all-season ticket holders. and with COVID occurring, the season got canceled.

And so most people, including me, had paid for season tickets and got none. So you assumed your season ticket payment would apply the next year. When you called the next year and said, okay, I'd like my tickets, but I've already paid, because I paid last year and you canceled the season, the Kennedy Center said, oh, if you wanted those payments back, you had X months to request it, or else we assumed you meant it as a contribution to the Kennedy Center. And so in my case, I said, I'm a 27-year ex-litigator, and you assumed wrong, and we got it applied.

But you've got that on the Kennedy Center. You've got it on airlines. You know how many people's flights? I've had three flights that I had prepaid. got canceled for COVID. They don't just say, oh, I better send Howard his money back. They say, if you want your money back, you have to call this way. Of course, you can't get through on the phones. And then finally, they just give you a credit to a future flight, unless you fight them. So it's a common practice. Danny is no better than them, no worse than them. I assure you a business

that understands it depends on fans and fan-friendly should act differently. But by the way, And that's what the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is supposed to do. It's supposed to investigate practices to see what legislative overtures are needed, what new legislation we needed. So if this were actually the committee doing their job, what they should have done is subpoenaed all the other ball clubs in the NFL. every club in Major League Baseball and hockey and football, the Kennedy Center and all other venues and said, what is your return of security deposit practices? We want to get the evidence of how America treats America

on returning security deposits. Do you voluntarily give them back, or do you make them ask for it? And we'd have legislation then that would say what it says with home security deposits. If you rent a house to someone, they give you a secure deposit. By law, you have a certain amount of time to return it. Well, that's what legislation we need, but in this case it doesn't exist.

And so the Danny, though, sounding terribly, and though he will owe a lot of people their money back, because everyone now knows, and I suspect the class action lawyers were at their typewriters all night, getting ready with their class actions for failure to return security deposits. The money will come back, but that will not be wrongdoing any different than most of the clubs. The other thing on that one point, they didn't even ask what is the practice of the other NFL clubs. Right. And in fact, Kevin, some have something much worse than a security deposit. The current de rigour is to charge you a seat license fee.

for the right to buy a season ticket. There's no pretense that's a deposit to make sure you pay for your ticket. It is a fee that you don't get back. That was a common practice with the new stadiums going back 25 years ago. It will be the common practice if Danny ever gets to build a stadium. He won't have a seat deposit. He'll have a fee, a license. Yes.

To buy a license, yes. Yeah. It's very similar. It's very similar. I don't want to lose this thought. To, you know, essentially for college, you know, to be an Alabama season ticket holder for their football games, you have to contribute a certain amount to the Crimson Tide Club. I don't even know what it's called.

To even have, to even be considered worthy of buying season tickets. And that's what a lot of these NFL teams with new stadiums had, you know, starting 25 years ago, including with Jack Kent Cook Stadium, is you had to buy. a license which wasn't refundable just to have the right to buy the tickets. Continue. Right. So Danny did it himself. People thought it was a

security deposit. He turned it into a license just by not telling you you get it back. It's not right, but it is not something that will stand out. It will stand out in fans. They should be angry. In legislators thinking, am I going

to give this guy 50 million or 50 cents towards a stadium? so it will hurt him in many ways, but it doesn't result in him selling the club, and it should result in the House Oversight Reform Committee doing its job, which is actually convening hearings on security deposit returns in America, instead of being so blatant that this is a chief political effort to get an easy target, Dan Snyder. I'm not a fan of his, but that's what it's shown to be.

So that's the security deposit. I don't want to get to the next part, the concealing of revenue from the league, until we've discussed this a little bit further. Because this was my reaction yesterday on the podcast and this morning and at the beginning of this podcast as well, is that, you know, if you have never really been involved, this isn't a criticism, but if you've never been involved in, you know, being accountable in a business for the finance, or really understanding, you know, withholding refunds or obligating the customer to reach out for their refund or using customers refunds in a matter of like using it as float, you know,

using their money for a longer period of time than maybe you committed to returning it to them for the purposes of making money off the money. These just are not unusual practices at all. And I suggested yesterday and today, like, it certainly would be a survivable thing for any other owner. And it wouldn't surprise me if most of the teams have had this, you know, have made it difficult for their season ticket holders to retrieve a refund, especially when you're talking about 10-year leases. And, you know, it's spelled out. And it's intuitive. People forgot.

Or people that were in charge of a bulk, you know, a corporate bulk purchase of ticket. It's a new person in charge. But I am curious because I don't know the answer to this, but I think you kind of answered it. But specific to the lease agreement that season ticket holders put a refundable deposit down for, what was, do you think, the obligation with respect to getting the refund? Was it on the team? Was it on the season ticket holder? It had to have been spelled out as to have.

how they would have gone about getting their refund? No, it's so what the contract terms would be is that you have to put a security deposit, which we can take in the event you fail to make your payment each year. And that will be a refundable security deposit. It will certainly not have said, to get that refund, here's the procedure. That won't be in the season ticket contract. So an obligation can be created by contract or by law. So in the housing situation, landlords are required by law to return their renter's security

deposit within certain number of days after the renter leaves to give the landlord the chance to look at the apartment, see what's been wrecked, and give an accounting back. I'm holding 50 bucks for this scratch, and here's the rest of your money. that's by law. Two of the jurisdictions, I don't know which two, did not have a law. And what the article in the letter says is at one point, the Redskins realized one of the jurisdictions now had a law. So if you were in the lucky jurisdiction, you actually got something that says, which they should have done for everyone. By the way, of course, as you know, we still have your deposit.

Do you want it back? and by the way, it would have been that simple, that easy for the Danny to earn his juice, as they say, because instead of at some point saying the coast is clear, the Sheans have not talked to us in X years, they've forgotten about this, take their money that's being held in an escrow account that hasn't gone into income, let's convert it to income, bring in the juice, You can't really self-help yourself to the Sheehan's money and call it your juice. But if you just at that point sent the letter, dear Sheeans, we've had your security deposit for the longest time. We're trying to clean up our books.

If you'd like it, please let us know in the next 30 days or else we'll assume that you've decided to help the command to sign new free agents. With that letter, they could have taken their juice and said, I tried to return it. What they did is they said, we won't say anything, they won't say anything, and at some point in time, we'll take it into income by saying the coast is clear and we'll call it juice. And that is sneaky. That doesn't feel good. That's probably, well, unethical depends on where your ethics are, irreligious depends on your church. But it doesn't break any law in two of the three jurisdictions. And in the third, you had to at least give people notice that you are holding their money.

By the way, is what they kept in juice? Was that taxable income? Of course. So it wasn't taxable when it was third-party money. Right. So as a security deposit, they were holding it for their season ticket holder, but they couldn't spend it and they didn't know taxes on it. At some point, they wanted to convert it to their money, spendable.

So to their credit, they didn't just say, Oh, we found some money must have been lost and not earned. They had to take into earnings. So they took the juice into earnings by attributing it as services fees or something on non-NFL events, because they didn't want to split the part. I'm not sure the NFL would protest and say, it's not a problem that you kind of swindled everyone out of their deposits. What the problem is, you didn't pay us our share of that.

We didn't get our cut of the VIG. Yeah, but we'll get to that in a moment, and I understand that it's, that that may be part of this involves this. But you made a really good point, and that is if Congress, who by the way has the popularity rating that's just barely above Dan Snyders, and now all of a sudden they're the hero, and Jason Friedman's the hero. But if they really wanted to do something that was really good for the consumer, they would take this learning and they would find out, how many sports franchises are making it really difficult or essentially being very evasive when it comes to these security deposits that were supposed to be returned at the end of the lease as long as you didn't damage your seat and you paid for your tickets on time.

And they would treat it like, you know, rental properties where the obligation is on, not on the tenant, but on the renter, you know, the owner to return it within. a period of time. That, Kevin, is the function of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Yeah. People keep, the House Oversight Reform Committee do investigations into practices in America for which there could be learning that would give rise to someone introducing legislation. So they haven't to come up with something.

When they were politically stumbling, trying to make embarrass the Danny for political gain, they actually came up with a worthwhile cause. I knew that the day I called the Kennedy Center and was told that three months earlier, they thought I intended to donate an entire season of play for the good of it that we need. Hey, you shouldn't be allowed to do that. And it's not only if I'm a former lawyer that I can demand it and get my money back, everybody who paid, you ought to have the obligations to say, I'm holding your money. What would you like me to do?

Would you like us to apply it to next year? Or would you like to make a contribution? Yeah. So there should be legislation that says when someone pays the security deposit, when the other person is on reasonable notice that the reason for the security deposit no longer exists, they have an obligation within one month to contact the owner and to make reasonable efforts to return the money to the proper owner. That should be legislation. That should be what the House Oversight Committee should have a report, not about Danny, but a report about those practices. is if they want to refer it to the FTC, figure out if it's an NFL-wide problem,

if it's an NBA and NFL problem, if it's sports-wise, if it's an entertainment, and refer the whole industry. Right. If they're all used car dealers turning back odometers when they sell the cars, refer them all, but it's not just, hey, we found we got more on the Danny. Yeah, I mean, in that letter to the FTC, the committee says the purpose of the committee's ongoing investigation,

is to inform legislative efforts to strengthen protections for employees across all workplaces. And that relates to obviously the toxic work environment that the Beth Wilkinson investigation spent months investigating. And something came out of that, and it was this new opportunity, but it doesn't appear as if they're going to use this opportunity to make things better for season ticket holders across the board in sports. it certainly appears as if they, you know, like everybody else, and God bless them, because I hope they're successful, but they're going after Dan Snyder and in this particular thing.

So with respect to the, you know, the not refunding in an ethical manner, but perhaps in a legal manner, you think this rises to essentially nothing other than maybe some of the ancillary stuff, which is, you know, which jurisdictions now that he's been ripping off customers or the perception that he's been ripping off customers are really going to step forward to help him with a new stadium? So I think it hurts him with the stadium. I think knowing Brian Frasch, knowing the attorney generals, I think they will use this opportunity to do what Congress isn't.

They will now push for legislation for all the teams in their jurisdictions and all the venues to come up with some sort of, because two of the jurisdictions just got embarrassed. Yeah. At least one of the jurisdictions had a requirement that you notify the people whose money you're holding and asking what you want to do with it. Well, it sounds like based on your Kennedy Center experience, D.C. was not the jurisdiction that created the law.

And I can't tell you how many people on the board and the heads of the Kenny Center would like to buy the commanders of Danny is forced to sell. Right. And they're doing it on their own. Yeah. Okay, so let's get to the next thing. The next thing, of course, being the concealing of revenue that was earmarked and designated per the league rules to go back to the league. You know, this was, you know, the concealing of ticket revenue from the NFL.

This was what front office sports reported on without as much detail. obviously. But Mr. Friedman, Jason Friedman, brought some evidence to the table on how they were doing this. Where do you come in on this allegation? Okay. So there seems to be two little parts to it. One is did the NFL get their part of this ticket refunds? You forget that. Let's do the clear part. Let's do the, for some reason, there are tickets that could be sold. $44 that are on the manifest as $44. But when you go to group sales, maybe they throw in a hot dog or because they'll give you a

block of tickets together, they'll put you all in the same section or the like. They negotiate a group sale. Now, I, stupid me, I always thought if you bought in bulk, if you bought a group sale, and the normal ticket is swayed for $44, you would save money. It turns out in this organization, you're doing. Doing a good job if you can charge them $55 for what would be a $44 ticket. That means the tickets are officially listed on your manifest that you must turn over to the league as $44. But your group sales department did such a good job.

They got $55 a ticket. Every time they were able to do this, they made $11 more per ticket than they were expecting to make or that you, the league had been told they would get for this ticket. So, the question is, what happens with that extra $11 a seat? It's not a very hard question. I don't care if you get 44 or 33 or 144. It's revenue from a game. You owe me, the NFL, whatever percentage you're supposed to pay me by our rules. You're not supposed to pay us just a percentage of the pro forma. So this, There, as Ricky used to say to Lucy, someone's got some explaining to do. There is a real problem if the NFL was not being given its cut of the extra $11,

namely the super profit that the team was making based on the fact that group sales did a good job in negotiating rates. Now, first of all, what just says to the two sets of books? I was laughing all night when I read that letter as to the two sets of books. Why are there two sets of books? There's actually one set of books, which is the set they're showing the NFL. But Jason Friedman got offended.

He said, you know, it's looking like I only made $44 a seat for my event. And those guys in charge of the Notre Dame Navy game or the Chesley concert, they're showing more income this year for things that I actually sold. Right. Because what the practice was is they took that, they made the full $55, the retains made the full $55. They were showing the NFL $44, but they wanted to pay taxes on it all.

They had to pay taxes on it all. So they misattributed the extra $11 as being money that. came out of the Navy Notre Dame game or a Chessly concert, namely things that the NFL had no claim to a part of, and things that they won audit because it wasn't an NFL event. And so there's the wrongdoing. How we got two sets of books is Jason Friedman said, oh, I know the books that were official. This is $11 on the Navy Notre Dame game and $44 for the sea at the Reds game. But hey, I'm giving too much credit to that other group and ticket sales that sells special events.

I want my full credit for what I earned. So he created a second set of books that said, Now, Danny, here's our official one, $44. But you want to know, now it's not to Danny, his boss, Mitch Gershman. You want to know, here's how much I really made. And those guys in special events, Chesley concerts, and Navy Notta Day. they made 20% less for argument's sake so you can see what a good job I did

that's why there's two sets of books going back to the practice going back to the practice someone is cheating the NFL of 11 bucks a ticket their share of 11 bucks a ticket because it's being attributed to a non-NFL game either a concert or a college

football game and that's clearly a problem do we finally get rid of the Danny on that one two people know so we know Jason Friedman was doing it. We know it was requested by his boss, according to

Jason Mitch Gershman. We know from Mitch Gershman that it went to Stephen Choi, the CFO. Yeah, Stefan, yeah. That said, we're showing 44 bucks a ticket. We actually made 55. What do you want to tell the league? It depends on what Stephen

Choi says, and Mitch Gershman says, is the reason they did it. If Stephen Choi and Mitch Gershman say it's just far easier for the league to get what the, for us to report what the standard tickets are, and they always take 44, and that's normal practice.

And so it just messes up all the books, so we just put it on an off-book event. Or if they say, I did it, I thought it made good sense, but I wouldn't take that. issue to the Danny. $11 $11. I wouldn't take that to the Danny. That's one thing we still don't get Danny.

But if they say, but if they say, look, honest people said 55, but the league would never know. We operated on the stupid statement ever made by a crook. How will they know? That's the most famous statement made by every crook. And the answer I gave us, like how criminal defense lawyer for 27 years is because they always know. They always find out. So if they did this on the How Will They Know, we have 44 in our manifest.

Just, why split the other 11? If that came from the Danny, and it's not done by all the other owners because even that one is too creative for them, the Danny is gone. If it stops at Joy or it stops at Gershman or Joy or Joy or Gershman give an innocuous antifference, for it or it's common practice because it's a league of swindling each other, we don't lose to Danny. But that's what it's, that's what comes down to. Yeah, the amount, because the number of events, right, that aren't football games, you know, involving the, the Washington football team, the Redskins or the Washington football team, you know, we're not talking about seven, you know, Navy Notre Dame games or seven, you know, Kenny Chesney concerts.

a year. The number of events that they ultimately have on an annual basis that aren't home football games is really nominal, you know, at that stadium. So it's not really the point of how much they actually held back. It's that they did, you know, deceive the league on what was truly a cut of their revenue. And then the second part of it is, did Danny order it? And will Stephen Choi and Mitch Gershman admit that they were ordered by Danny to do it. And to your point, too, how many other teams have tried to skirt a little bit or skim a little bit on other events held in their stadiums or, you know, or worse, you know, report inaccurately the actual number of tickets sold to the event and whether or not this is a common practice. But essentially what you're saying

is if ultimately Dan cheated the rest of the owners, and this isn't something that happens, and it's proved that Dan ordered this, it's a big problem for him. It's a big problem. Look, maybe the Roonies could survive it, but that's because the Roonies wouldn't do it. Right.

But if you got Dan anyway, for whom this is your nightmare that you needed the way out, you just needed a way out that didn't take every other owner with him or a group of your owners with him, the sexual harassment, the front office atmosphere, that covers a lot of our clubs. We've got, you know, we've got Deshaun Watson and Bob Kraft and massage powers. We've got Jerry Jones having kids. So none of that works.

If this is one where the Danny's gone a little bit beyond everyone, they need an excuse. There's plenty of people to buy this club, and he's going to have trouble getting a stadium anyway. This will be the graceful exit. And the question then is, next. Um, you know, this is one that should affect the snide, Tanya as much as Dan. Arguably, Tanya could say, I didn't realize Dan was nickel and diming the league this way. Shame on him. Throw out my husband.

But it's awfully hard to stay married and do that. Um, so they rise and fall together, whereas the sexual harassment ones, once Tanya has taken over the team, that kind of becomes a problem of throwing out a, female owner of a team over issues about mistreatment of females by the team, that would certainly seem to be problematic. This one, the financial ones, hit the Snyders together. Is it telling at all that Washington immediately came out with a statement last week, you know, threatening perjury on, you know, Friedman, even though they didn't mention him by name? And after yesterday's detailed letter to the FTC, we have yet to get a statement from the team?

it's somewhat telling Kevin when I practiced law and my whole firm had this we always spoke last didn't matter how much the client said we got to get something out because you cannot know the truth no matter how much the client swears so this could have been news to Danny yesterday when he saw this it could have been news to him and he could have been involved he's like oh you're Yeah, the frigging Kenny Chesley concert forgot about that. It was nothing. It was what to do with $100,000. So stick it on the Chesley. It took one second. That happens all the time with clients and the like. So I always think the Redskins and the commanders now are not getting the best legal advice

because they're doing this in the press and they're doing it before they know. Wait until everyone else has spoken. Take the heat. Let Kevin and Gutman. talking this podcast and Galdi talking his podcast because all that matters is who lasts last. Not how long you last, but who lasts last? So you shouldn't be coming out there reacting to everything. So I think they had an oh shit moment yesterday where I think they believed in what they said last week and now they realize, oh, it's seven games. It's Notre Dame, Navy, and Chesley.

And did we ever have a Rihanna concert or something? Who else did we do this with? and now they're trying to figure out what to do and a little damage control. What's more interesting is that Beth Wilkinson, the thought is that Beth knew this earlier. Right. If Beth knew this earlier, I assure you I know Beth well, this would hit her the same way it would hit with me with it, which is, I wonder if Jeff Cash and Roger Goodell know about this, so she would have let them know.

So the league's probably known for two years, and they haven't taken action. it might be because it's like Deshaun Watson, they'll keep their investigation going until everything's fallen, they know it, and then they'll see what makes the most sense. So they may still be, this might be under review. It's gone to the greatest center fielder in history now, Mary Jo White.

You hit anything in the air, and it goes to her automatically, and she gets to catch it. So this is now in Mary Joe White's basket yet again. So eventually the NFL will respond, with Mary Jo White, and maybe this is the basis they throw them out. But we've got those steps. Did Danny know?

Did it come from Danny? Is there any innocent explanation that Choi and Gershman have? And is it done by other clubs? You got to remember, there's a normal audit process. So the league is used to clubs having made decisions each year as to what is reportable to the league and what isn't. And the league's auditors looking all of it and saying, actually, this $11 that went in Chesley, if you get premium purchases based on season ticket pays that exceeded your view, we don't

go by the manifest, we go by the actual revenue in. Right. So we kick that back in. And I was surprised, but it's helpful that, for Dan, that traditionally the Redskins did relatively better in the audit, owing less than other times. teams and last time was something like $84,000. $86,000 when the average was $400,000 after the audit the teams owed. Yeah.

You said something that I just made a note of. You said that Beth Wilkinson perhaps knew about these financial impropriety allegations. And if she knew, then Roger Goodell knew when she presented, you know, her oral findings from this report. Is it possible that part of that $10 million dollar fall? fine was for this. Well, I have my own view on that $10 million fine. I don't believe any of the fine, that fine would have been this.

Because if that were true, they would have done a real fine. Let me, let me. No, I know. Essentially, it was a charitable, deducted, you know, deduction, you know, fine. You've explained that in the past, but go ahead and do it again for everybody else. So real quickly, the red. every year give a certain amount to charity. Right.

They give it voluntarily to charity, and there'll be more than $10 million. They don't have to give a penny more this year or last year. It's just that the fine denominated certain organizations they had to give money, too, like organizations focused on abusive women. So if all they do is take their standard charitable community involvement every year and directed to particular causes. They don't pay a penny more. I call a fine when I lose money that I would otherwise have.

This is a redirection of the normal charitable efforts. It didn't cost Danny a penny more. It didn't cost the team of any more. No, if they were serious and they had decided, you know what, you've cheated us, we want to find that would be paid to the leak. first it would be you owe the league X. Nobody starts with fines. They start with repayment.

Danny now owes the team whatever percentage it is of each of the $11 that went to the Navy Notre Dame game. Probably not a big number, by the way, in the larger scheme of things. I think it would have made his $86,000, $400,000 like every other team. it's just a question of, was this, was this uglier? Was this by its nature that Troy, the CFO says, look, everyone knew this was owed to the league, and Dan, you said, how are they going to find out? Screw him. If that's what he tells Paschard Goodell or Mary Jo White, which he will have to answer,

you got to kick them out. It's not about how much it's about what you did. Yeah, it's about what you did. You stole. But back to the Wilkinson. thing because you know you sort of suggested that maybe Roger Goodell has known about this and that's what I'm trying to get to. If Beth Wilkinson knew that this was going on, you know, the not refunding, the skimming off the top, you know, via the 11 bucks difference to the, you know,

Kenny Chesney concert in the Army and the Navy Notre Dame game. And he hasn't done anything about it already, what makes us think he's going to do something about it now? So, first answer is he likely won't, but that would be because of what the other owners are doing. Remember, that 400,000. He likely would not? He likely would not do anything. So what makes us think he would do something about it? We don't know that he would because we've already put out the questions that it depends what the other owners are doing.

So they may have heard the following from that. The Redskins have been reporting manifest prices to the league, and in some cases, namely, 800,000 on three events, a million 217 events, they actually got premium prices and didn't pay the additional amount that they received for those ticket sales to the league. But that would then normally go in their 86,000 that they owed for repayment. The 400,000 average that the other teams have been forced to cough up. to this pool to this part. That may have been worse things. Yeah. It may have been...

Who knows? It may have been that they only... They didn't claim the last exhibition game. They thought it was three exhibition games we get. Why? Oh, it was a misunderstanding. Like, they all might beching in their own ways. So at some point, I believe, they would prefer at some point to sweep most of this

under the rug to have audits, readjust. just make sure everyone's gotten their money. But the problem is with the Dan, he doesn't have that luxury. Understood. If he's been caught cheating, cheating, stealing from the other guys, they probably have to chuck them. Yeah. And again, like, because, A, they want him gone, and they're looking for a legitimate reason, even if in previous years, let's just say the Vikings got audited

and they owed $386,000 after the audit back to the league, and they're joking around like, look at what the Wilts are trying to do with some of those tickets, you know, ticket sales and some of the events that they've had at their building. Come on, man, you know, but they let it go. Whereas with Dan, they're looking for a reason on this stuff. Now, there are a couple of other questions I have, including the other allegation that was made in this that doesn't fall into one of those two big buckets, but I'm still curious as to what you think about their ticket selling practices.

We're going to get to that with Howard Gutman right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Don't forget, you can bet on the NBA playoffs at mybooky.ag or mybooky.com. Use my promo code Kevin, D.C. They'll match your first deposit, dollar for dollar, all the way up to $1,000. We've got more playing games tonight, and then the NBA playoffs, not the play-in games, but the playoffs get started on Saturday. Howard Gutman continues with us. A couple of quick questions before I get to this last part of the letter from the Oversight and Reform Committee to the FTC.

Number one, all of this stuff that's been alleged, this should be easy to prove, right? Yes. The bank account will show it. Someone audits the Chesney concert or the Navy game and how many people actually attended and what seats there were. That can be found. and they can ask Gershman and they can ask Troy. What's hard to prove is did it come from Dan? Number two, what do you make of Jason Friedman? I mean, this is a guy that initially was the guy that sent the letter to Mary Joe White about corroborating the one part of the accusation from Tiffany Johnson about Dan nudging or shoving or pushing or trying to push her into his limo.

He was the guy that corroborated that part of the allegation, not the other part, the hand on the thigh underneath the table at a business meeting. What do you make of just how much he is saved along the way, information-wise, how much as the VP of ticket sales, not a CFO, not, you know, one of their accountants necessarily? What do you make of how much information he has? So the first thing is he was in the very first group that Jason Wright fired. He represents Jason Friedman participated for 20 years in a culture that was wrong. And he didn't work to correct the culture. He wanted, in fact, credit for his $55 sale. He just wanted to document it that if I'm going down, there are others going with me.

So, you know, that's who he is. That's who he is. Let's let others judge what they think of that. But if I were Jason right, the minute I came in, I would have fired Jason Friedman. So the one thing I don't have is any, I got any sympathy for the firing, the retaliatory firing. If Troy were still the CFO, if Gersman were still there, this is outrageous what's been done in the ticket policy. It's outrageous what was done with the approach and the thought and treatment of women and house needed to be clean. The part where Danny said, this has been a real problem,

and I feel terrible about it. That part's true, and you've got to clean it up. The part that we have the question of is, you were the head of it. How could you let it go? Did you not realize you're doing this? And unfortunately, it is an old boys club. It's 32 guys who are, all take pride on A, their treatment of women up till now, and B, how clever they are in their billing practices and in their reporting practices and in their tax reporting practices, instead of saying, you know what, I made this much, I owe this much, please make sure everyone gets it. Or if we have a question, please ask the Lee what we do about this. Right. Well, yeah, of course, that would be the upstanding ethical, you know, honest way to approach it.

But a lot of these guys who were entrepreneurs and real scrappers, you know, scrappy dudes in building things, they always felt figured out ways. Look, I've told this story before in one business in particular that I started. We collected the receipts from supermarket chains on behalf of, of the supermarket chains with customers. Those were big sales, 150 to 200 bucks a pop. You know, we had net 30-day terms with them, but they had to invoice us,

and they weren't used to invoicing people. They were used, they were in a cash business, and it would take them forever to invoice. Did we rush them to invoice us? Of course not. Those net 30-day terms turned into, by the time we actually paid back those receipts, it was three months,

and we used that money to really, you know, and the float off of that money, to help build the business. And so this goes on all the time in businesses, and especially people who've been in startups and early stage businesses, and that's kind of the environment that Snyder comes from. I'm not defending it, by the way,

because he's running a goddamn NFL team. Like, at some point, you know, stop trying to extract every nickel and dime out of a business that's worth, you know, $3 to $5 billion. But the next thing that I want to, to get to is the purpose of the committee's investigation, House Oversight and Reform, right, is this, you know, investigation of the toxic work environments and, you know, it will help them

inform kind of legislative efforts to prevent toxic work environments in the future, right? So that was the purpose of this. Now we're into all of this financial stuff. And this is, right now, the thing that, you know, probably were closer to potentially Danny being gone than we've ever been. But there's nothing about what their actual purpose of convening on this thing. We haven't heard anything with respect to that. And the sexual harassment, you know, reason and the toxic workplace environment. This is the financial improprieties have taken center stage. So what should people make of the fact that nothing's come out of this household?

Oversight and Reform Committee about what their initial purpose was so far? So if it was legit, it should have been a bipartisan effort to investigate toxic, gender toxic work environments in American sports. And as soon as they hit with the Danny, instead of saying, I wonder what else we can get on the Danny, they should have said, oh, this is a topic worth our hearings. let's now subpoena each of the leagues and each of the sports and done something about toxic work environments, the notion of cheerleaders, the notion of,

and it could be just as much at the NBA, it could be at the NHL. None of these are really gender equal leagues because of the nature of sports, but does that spill into the front office, does it spill into the clubhouse? Do people have a right to be female and to work for a sports team to ask it is to answer it,

so we now need legislation protecting the sports environments. If they had done that, they would be credible. They should be by person. If they instead had said, you know what seems to be more important for our legislative overreach, which is people's security deposits and move forward there, that's also worthy of their effort. What they're doing, however, is focusing on one guy

who's unpopular for the political expedience it gets in an election year where they know they're likely they could well end up in the minority come January. So they're going to get there, they're each going to go to the mic, and they're going to make their, I found this and this, and they will go back home and campaign about that,

show their progressive stripes. And that's what's wrong with our political system far bigger than this, because if anyone was serious and spent all the time, why don't we now have the follow-up on either toxic work environments in sports for the genders, for gays, for, you know, whatever minority it might be, or why don't we have a serious look at the abuse of security deposits and other money's owed to third parties?

The last thing I wanted to ask you about, I was going to ask you, by the way, about the political stuff, but you just answered. it. So the last part of this letter was a section called misleading customers to sell higher price tickets. And I think I asked you about this last week about, you know, could some of this be about overly aggressive or misleading or, you know, ticket selling practices of some sort? And part of this is where Friedman essentially says, team executives, including Mitch Gershman and Stefan Choi had routinely instructed him, Friedman, to misrepresent the availability of affordable general admission tickets to fans seeking to attend commanders games. By the way, it wasn't

commanders games. It was Redskin games for all of this stuff and probably not even Washington football team games, but whatever. Mr. Friedman would inform these customers that the team had sold out of general admission tickets, meaning mostly the 400 level for those of you that are wondering, while at the same time he would sell those tickets to ticket brokers in bulk. He would then direct fans to the teams purported 160,000 name wait list. The apparent intent of this practice was to trick customers into believing that they had two choices, either buy the premium price tickets or join the waiting list. I mean, for those of you that didn't follow along, it's, look, you can't buy the cheap seats.

You got to buy the expensive seats, or we're going to put you at the back of the line and going to have to wait years to buy tickets because we don't want to sell you the cheap seats. It's more advantageous for us to sell those to ticket brokers. But look, there are lots of businesses. I mean, you know, just go watch Wolf of Wall Street if nobody's seen that movie and what Jordan Belford did with all of his salesmen. So we understand aggressive selling. But my question to you is, is there anything in there that is untoward or illegal or

could rise to the level of something that would be important to say an attorney general, because all three of the jurisdictions attorney generals were ced on this letter or the league? Untoward, for sure, illegal, absolutely not. Rise to the level of the attorney generals. I could definitely see some legislature in response to this saying that in ticket practices, the club is obligated to be to be truthful about the availability and prices of the tickets.

Just like, you know, they try to say, you cannot knock on the door and say the Joneses have asked me to do their driveway, and I know this you could use it as well. I'm having to be here today, you'll get a great price. These are awful. But the problem is we would hope that our football team and our owner who's a billionaire weren't to act the way the guy who's trying to pave your driveway and needs it acts.

And that doesn't happen in this city. So it's untoward. It's not illegal now, but it could be regulated. But is it a surprise? If you think that, you know, like there's, oh, please, can I pay more? I mean, that's what happens every day in the market. Yeah. And, you know, with respect to him, too, obviously, you'd like to think that the,

owner of an NFL team that's worth, you know, between $4 and $5 billion, again, wouldn't, you know, wouldn't be in that position of trying to extract every nickel, you know, $10 of parking for training camps, suing season ticket holders, the whole thing. But as Sally wrote in her column, which, you know, she writes brilliantly, you know, the contents of the letter are at once stunning and unsurprising, unsurprising, unsurprising giving that Snyder always seems to find new tar pits, she wrote. And that's the thing, right? There's this overarching, you know,

two-decade-long theme of this guy treating this customer base poorly. And it's ultimately... Yeah. Yes, we think so. But here's the thing, Sally and Matthew are no better than the House Oversight Committee. Because

if they really meant it, what should they be doing now? They are hammering for more details on Snyder. Has anyone I love Ted, I love Jack Davies, I love the ownership group at Monarch. I'm not a great fan of the learners, but I respect the learners.

Has anyone now done what's a journalist, not the vindictive person, but the journalist should do and say, I wonder what if there are security deposit issues in our other teams

and how our other teams handle it? it. I wonder if there are league revenue provisions for our other teams, how our other teams handle it. It shows your true stripes. What we know what Maski and Sally's next article is going be, it's going to be on the commanders. The commanders sell, but what we're entitled to as people buying the paper who want journalists to be doing their journalist integrity is to know how common these practices are and have we been victimized elsewhere. So we can't really condemn the Danny. We just want to know if there should be company, and it turns out

that we need a code of ethics for sports, for teams, for venues. And if someone doesn't do a Kennedy Senate story after this, it means if you show Sweeney Todd, you're allowed to do things differently than if you have Taylor Hineke on the field. All right. Two more questions on this. Number one, what's next? And number two, how does all of this conclude best guest today on April 13th? So the FTC will pick this up. I suspect the attorney generals from the states will pick it up. Someone will get the answers from Gershman and Choi as to were these practices done

and did Danny know? And was there any innocent explanation whatsoever unless they lawyer up and refuse to testify, refuse to cooperate? But that's probably what will happen. We will finally know the answer of that. At the same time, I suspect the league is really busy, seeing what the practices are around the league if they didn't know already, and therefore sounding out their members as to, here's the story. The only other people who have any problem just picking them is the Atlanta Falcons,

who they also did this, or nobody else is doing this in what we want to do, but there's handwriting on the wall. It's just an invisible ink, but over time we're going to see it, but we know it's taken shape right now. We just have to figure out what the shape looks like. And how does the whole thing play out? Is he ousted or not? I suspect I will give as little credit to the other owners as they deserve.

I suspect the problems in the league are comparable, and therefore, just like the sexual harassment, they can't go over after one without threatening them all. And so they ask Danny this is part of their normal order process. He repays some money and they go on, not because the half of them who are innocent of this aren't serious, but because the other half knows it takes them down. By the way, and I haven't mentioned this in the past, but I'm going to mention it right now. Howard does a radio show in Richmond on WRVA, that's 96%.

1.1 FM and 1140 a.m. Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. It's called, as I see it with Howard Gutman. So if you're in the Richmond area on a Saturday morning, tune in for that, or you can get it on the Odyssey app because that station is an Odyssey station. The name of the show, again, is As I See It with Howard Gutman. You're the best. This was awesome. We will, I'm sure we will be talking again soon. because it just is never ending. You know, Ben Standing, and I talked about this in the open to the show, Ben Standing put out a tweet yesterday,

which I just thought was really capturing kind of the whole thing as it relates to this team and Snyder. And he said, Ron Rivera so badly wants the past to be the past. You know, he had said last week, for us to step up beyond the shadow that we've had to deal with, you know, we want to really, you know, have a fresh start. But by now, Ben writes, even he must recognize that's not happening anytime soon with Dan Snyder's long shadow.

He can't blame anybody but the owner for this and the owner's past behavior. And by the way, the past behavior that's led to everybody despising him because that's a part of this. You know, we were worried, Kevin, that at some point they would make Dan Snyder sympathetic. That point can never be reached. That point can never be reached. Always the next one. Unless Jason Friedman's a liar, but I don't think he is. Thank you for doing this, as always.

I really appreciate it. All the best. Take good care.