The NFL’s GOAT is at last poised to enter the ranks of team ownership.

Former quarterback Tom Brady, widely considered to be the league’s greatest-ever player, will finally have his long-delayed bid to become a Raiders part-owner brought before other NFL team owners for approval, according to industry sources and multiple reports. Brady’s proposal to become a roughly 10% Raiders equity holder, along with business partner Tom Wagner, has cleared the league’s finance committee and is set to be brought before the full ownership during the NFL’s fall business meeting Tuesday in Atlanta.

Approval will require 24 of 32 team owners, and that vote is now expected to be a formality after the finance committee unanimously cleared the transaction. 

The 47-year-old Brady, who has grown close with Raiders majority owner Mark Davis, has been actively working on this deal for nearly two years, but it has run into several obstacles, including concerns within the league that he was receiving a hefty discount on the value of the team equity. Brady and Wagner have since increased their offer to an undisclosed figure. Las Vegas is currently estimated to be worth $6.7 billion, the seventh highest in the league.

Davis will remain the Raiders’ majority owner, but Brady is expected to have a significant role in Las Vegas’s football operations—not surprising given his unrivaled status as a seven-time Super Bowl winner.

Brady also owns a minority share of the Davis-led Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA. 

Fox Restrictions

Brady—also beginning a 10-year, $375 million broadcasting talent deal with Fox Sports that has included plenty of scrutiny on his booth performance—is already subject to several restrictions due to that pending dual owner/analyst role. 

In anticipation of this deal potentially being completed, the NFL has created several rules for Brady. Among them is a prohibition on performing common television analyst functions such as attending broadcast production meetings with coaches and players, and watching practices.

Even with those rules, the Brady deal still presents the seeming conflict of owning part of one team while also covering all of them. 

Other Meeting Matters

Several other issues are expected to be discussed at the owners meeting, including an update on television viewership for the league up by 1% so far this year, and is set for another boost with an expansion of the Monday Night Football simulcast schedule. Among the other pressing developments set for Tuesday:

• Owners will likely take a vote on a $1.4 billion renovation agreement for EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville, home of the Jaguars. The public-private deal, calling for $775 million in taxpayer funds, will provide a dramatic upgrade to the 29-year-old facility. 
• The NFL is set to award Super Bowl LXII in 2028 to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, according to a development initially reported by Sports Business Journal. That game is the next available Super Bowl still without a host as the next three games will be held in New Orleans; Santa Clara, Calif.; and Inglewood, Calif., respectively. 

Mercedes-Benz Stadium last hosted the Super Bowl in 2019, a 13–3 victory for the Patriots over the Rams, and the venue remains one of the most technologically advanced sports facilities in the world. 

FIFA is set to begin high-level discussions about the intricacies of its lucrative player-transfer system after a recent court decision threw its legitimacy into question. 

On Monday, 10 days after some of FIFA’s transfer rules were declared contrary to European Union law by the Court of Justice of the EU, soccer’s governing body announced it will open a global dialogue on the transfer system, involving key stakeholders—think leagues, clubs, agents, players’ unions—to adopt the policy in question, which is article 17 of FIFA’s regulations on the status and transfer of players. A statement said the move “is in line with FIFA’s strategic objective to further improve the transfer system.”

While big changes could be coming to the always-entertaining summer and winter FIFA transfer windows, it will also provide an opportunity to keep modernizing the current process that has been in place for two decades, FIFA chief legal and compliance officer Emilio García Silvero said in a video posted online. “Given the interval of over 20 years, and given the manner in which football has developed during this period, FIFA looks forward to developing its regulatory framework further,” Silvero said.

In the most recent transfer window, clubs committed to spending nearly $6.5 billion on acquiring new players.

So far, there are no indications FIFA wants to challenge the ruling. “FIFA will always act in compliance with European law and it will make sure to maintain hand in hand with its stakeholders a modern and robust valid regulatory framework for international football,” Silvero said.