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FedEx Made a Demand Dan Snyder Couldn’t Afford to Dismiss

Long a defiant defender of his team’s name, the owner of the Washington football team changed course in short order after FedEx sent a letter threatening to withdraw its sponsorship.

Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington N.F.L. team, agreed to review the team’s name this month after sponsor FedEx said in a letter that it would back out of an $8 million naming rights deal unless the team’s name was changed.Credit...Patrick Mcdermott/Getty Images

After decades of controversy, it took a serious threat to Dan Snyder’s team’s finances, and those of the rest of the N.F.L., to get the owner of the Washington Redskins to consider changing the team’s name, which Native Americans (and many dictionaries) consider to be a slur.

The final straw? FedEx, which pays about $8 million a year for the naming rights to the team’s stadium in Landover, Md., and whose chairman has been trying to sell his shares in the team, said that it would back out of the deal if the name was not changed in a letter that The New York Times was allowed to review.

On July 2, the legal counsel for FedEx sent a letter to his counterpart with the team saying the company would demand its name be removed from the stadium, where it has been displayed since 1999, if the team name was not changed.

“We are hopeful that a name change and a new head coach will help move public perception in a positive direction, restore the team’s reputation and lessen our deep concerns,” the letter said.

A day later, Snyder said that the team “will undergo a thorough review” of its name, bending to a company that committed to paying more than $200 million for its affiliation with the team.

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The company has committed to paying more than $200 million for the naming rights to FedEx Field, in Landover, Md.Credit...Drew Angerer/Getty Images

FedEx’s push “was really a turning point,” said an N.F.L. owner who requested anonymity to speak publicly about another owner. “At this point in time, you can’t be insensitive because it affects all of us.”

The majority of, though not all, the N.F.L.’s owners now agree that the name should be changed, the person said, and Snyder has “reached the point where he’s moved on.”

It is unclear how long the team will take to review an issue it has known about for decades. Changing team names, logos and colors — a process that requires navigating trademarks and the league’s many licensing deals with partners — can often take years. The team declined to make Snyder or any team officials available for this article, saying it would address any questions after the review is complete. The N.F.L. also did not respond to a request for comment.

But Snyder’s shift from total resistance to grudging recognition in a matter of weeks has been remarkably swift in a league that often moves deliberately, if at all.

For years, Snyder faced little financial pressure to change his team’s name because sponsors were all but silent on the issue. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, who has said he grew up rooting for the team, in the past publicly stood by Snyder’s argument that the club’s name and logos are meant to honor the team’s heritage and Native Americans.

Activists have opposed the name for decades, filing lawsuits that Snyder fought vociferously. Politicians have called him out and friends have privately appealed to his sense of decency, all to no avail.

Still, Goodell had tried to prevent the controversy from bubbling into a full-blown crisis. In 2013, when Snyder inflamed the debate by emphatically telling a reporter, “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps,” the commissioner hosted a meeting at the league’s headquarters in New York to clear the air.

According to two people who attended the meeting, Snyder brought with him Bruce Allen, then the team’s president; a strategist; investors in the team; and Lanny Davis, a lawyer who represented Snyder. Goodell was joined by several deputies, including Adolpho Birch, then a senior vice president.

Snyder’s group presented surveys that showed that the team’s fans supported the name, and several other justifications for sticking with it. Goodell questioned Snyder without pushing a viewpoint, one person said. Near the end of the meeting, Charlie Black, a political consultant hired by the team, told Goodell that if he convinced the N.F.L.’s other owners to endorse the name, the problem would go away.

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N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell publicly stood by Snyder. But league officials have been quietly preparing for the day when his team might be renamed.Credit...Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Goodell pointedly explained that he did not speak for the league’s owners and that Snyder needed to communicate with them directly if he wanted their support. The meeting ended as it started, with Snyder still in control of the destiny of the team’s name.

Several departments at the headquarters, though, were quietly doing trademark searches and taking other steps to prepare for the day when the team might be renamed.

The hands-off approach crumbled quickly amid the protests that followed George Floyd’s death in police custody this May. Goodell apologized last month for not listening to the concerns of African-American players years before, in response to some of the league’s biggest stars calling on him to address systemic racism.

Faced with growing public demands, companies across the country have issued statements expressing their commitment to undo racist policies, promote diversity in their hiring and fight injustice in their communities. In late June, FedEx, Nike and Pepsi received letters from dozens of investment funds that hold shares in those companies, urging them to distance themselves from the Washington team.

“It was clear to us that those racial justice statements implicated their relationship with the Washington football team,” said Carla Fredericks, the director of First Peoples Worldwide, who led the letter-writing campaign.

Still, FedEx joining the fight against the team name came as a surprise to those who have led it. Suzan Shown Harjo, who for decades has pushed high school, college and professional teams to abandon names and logos with Native American imagery, said she and other activists have pressured FedEx and other team sponsors in the past, with little success.

On June 26, dozens of activists and investment groups sent FedEx’s chairman, Frederick Smith, a letter urging the company to terminate its relationship with the team because its name “remains a dehumanizing word characterizing people by skin color and a racial slur with hateful connotations.”

Smith is part of a trio of investors who hold about 40 percent of the team’s shares. He and the other limited partners, Dwight Schar, the chairman of a major homebuilder, and Robert Rothman, the chairman of a private equity firm, have tried to sell their shares for many months.

FedEx declined to make Smith available for comment, and efforts to reach Schar and Rothman were unsuccessful. John Moag, who reportedly represents them in the sale, said he does not “talk on or off the record during a transaction.”

After years of standing by the team, the companies finally bent.

“All of a sudden, after this letter, they’re saying, ‘Change the name,’ and what’s the difference — George Floyd was murdered before the world and corporate America woke up,” Harjo said.

Harjo said she was hopeful that the pressure from the team’s corporate sponsors would result in a new name but was skeptical that Snyder was only trying to buy time and once again let the controversy pass.

“What they’ve done is try to take control of the issue, and that’s what they’ve done all along, and that’s what they mean by process and review,” she said.

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Protesters at Lambeau Field demonstrated their opposition to the Washington team’s name before a 2019 game against the Green Bay Packers.Credit...Benny Sieu/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

Changing the team name would ease tensions between Snyder and lawmakers in Washington, many of whom oppose his goal of building a new stadium in the district. Snyder keeps a close circle of friends that includes the team’s investors, and he bristles at any suggestion that he change the team name, according to several people who have worked with him. Over the years, Snyder has pulled back from speaking publicly, convinced that there is no upside to trying to improve his image.

“His bad media, which has been terrible, bordering on horrible, is a result of a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: They hate me, therefore I hate them and I won’t talk to them,” said Davis, the Washington lawyer who said he encouraged Snyder to get his side of the story out. “It’s circular.”

The team’s lack of competitive success has not helped. They have made the postseason only five times since Snyder bought the team in 1999, and off-the-field controversies have made things worse.

Snyder has sued an impoverished longtime season-ticket holder and a reporter who published an article he didn’t like, charged fans to watch training camp and cut down trees on federally protected land to improve the view from his house. Many of the team’s cheerleaders have described an uncomfortable work environment, including a photo shoot in which cheerleaders were topless at an event for sponsors and ticket holders.

Then there is the name, which even some die-hard fans reject. Eddie Huang, the celebrity chef and author of the memoir, “Fresh Off the Boat,” grew up in suburban Washington in the 1980s idolizing the team. But as a teenager, he said, he began to question why white fans dressed up as Native Americans.

“It got to a point where I was old enough to recognize that if someone had done this with a name about Asians or Blacks or Mexicans, it wouldn’t be accepted,” said Huang, who stopped wearing the team’s jersey several years ago. “If you called a team the ‘yellow skins’ or ‘Black skins,’ it would be lights out.”

Attendance has suffered. The team drew an average of 65,500 fans last year, less than 80 percent of the capacity at FedEx Field, one of the lowest percentages in the league. Over the last few years, the team has ripped about 10,000 seats out of the stadium.

Within and outside of the N.F.L., observers note that Snyder could benefit from changing the team’s name. Longtime fans would scoop up old merchandise and buy new jerseys and caps when the makeover was complete.

A new name would also help pave the way for the team to build a stadium in the district. Snyder’s favored location is the site of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, referred to locally as R.F.K., where the team played for 35 years, until 1996. The land is owned by the National Park Service, which has leased it through 2038 to Events DC, a quasi-public organization that manages several Washington sports sites.

Muriel Bowser, the city’s mayor, has said in the past that the team should not be allowed to build inside the district without changing the name, but allowed this week that the name was not the only issue in deciding whether to grant the team access.

Snyder has over two decades lost trust with fans, politicians and Native American groups, but in a moment of societal change, he finally faces a business imperative to alter the team’s future.

Fredericks, who led the group challenging sponsors, said that only a complete name and mascot change was acceptable. “The investors are very clear that a half measure is not going to put these issues to bed,” she said.

Ken Belson covers the N.F.L. He joined the Sports section in 2009 after stints in Metro and Business. From 2001 to 2004, he wrote about Japan in the Tokyo bureau. More about Ken Belson

Kevin Draper is a sports business reporter, covering the leagues, owners, unions, stadiums and media companies behind the games. Prior to joining The Times, he was an editor at Deadspin. More about Kevin Draper

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: The Demand Snyder Couldn’t Afford to Dismiss. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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