Bezos Could Be the Real Winner from Amazon’s Sports Deals

Last week, Martin Peers questioned in this space whether tech companies were making a wise move when they began showering billions of dollars on sports leagues for streaming rights to their games. But even if those deals turn out to be duds for the likes of Amazon, Alphabet’s YouTube and others, tech billionaires may have found another way to make a bundle from them: by buying the sports teams themselves. 

The latest test of that could come from Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chair of Amazon, who is reportedly among the bidders for the Washington Commanders NFL team. The top bids for the team, which were due last Friday, have exceeded $7 billion, Forbes reported last week. If that eye-watering figure is accurate, it would represent a spectacular profit for the Commander’s current owner, Dan Snyder, who paid $750 million for the team, formerly known as the Redskins, in 1999. It would also be a huge bump over the record $4.65 billion the Denver Broncos sold for earlier this year.