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      Nike Says It Ended Deal With Neymar Amid Investigation of Sexual Abuse

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      Nike said that Neymar, the soccer superstar, had refused to cooperate with an investigation into “credible allegations of wrongdoing” made by one of the company’s employees.Nike ended its sponsorship agreement with the Brazilian soccer superstar Neymar last year after he refused to participate in an investigation of an accusation that he had sexually assaulted a Nike employee, the company confirmed Thursday night.Nike said its investigation did not reach a conclusion as to whether an assault had occurred, which was why it made no public statement at the time.“No single set of facts emerged that would enable us to speak substantively on the matter,” Nike said in a statement. “It would be inappropriate for Nike to make an accusatory statement without being able to provide supporting facts. Nike ended its relationship with the athlete because he refused to cooperate in a good faith investigation of credible allegations of wrongdoing by an employee.”The accusation of assault was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday night. Nike’s statement obtained by The New York Times matched comments made to The Journal by Hilary Krane, Nike’s general counsel.A spokeswoman for Neymar, 29, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but denied the accusation to The Journal.Nike first signed Neymar to a sponsorship agreement in 2005, when he was just 13 years old and playing for the youth team of Santos F.C., one of the biggest clubs in Brazil. The company continued sponsoring Neymar after he moved to F.C. Barcelona and then to Paris St.-Germain, establishing himself as one of the world’s best and most popular players. But he switched allegiances to Puma in 2020, without an explanation for leaving Nike before his contract had expired.In 2018, a longtime employee filed a complaint to Nike, according to The Journal, which cited documents it reviewed and unnamed people familiar with the investigation. According to The Journal, the complaint said that during a marketing tour in the United States in June 2016, the woman helped Neymar, who appeared to be drunk, into his hotel room after midnight. While there, Neymar tried to force the woman to perform oral sex and blocked her from leaving the room, the complaint said, according to The Journal.The woman asked Nike about the status of her complaint in 2019, The Journal reported. The company, which believed the woman had not wanted it to take any action on it, according to Nike’s statement, hired an outside law firm to perform an investigation. While representatives for Neymar denied the accusation to the law firm, according to the Journal, he refused to personally be interviewed, prompting the termination of his sponsorship agreement.Around the same time in 2019, Neymar was accused of raping a Brazilian model, Najila Trindade, whom he had flown to Paris. He said they had consensual sex, and he published a number of explicit messages he had exchanged with Trindade on social media, resulting in a backlash against Neymar and many of his sponsors.No charges were filed against Neymar in the case, and the Brazilian authorities eventually charged Trindade, who publicly identified herself as Neymar’s accuser, with slander, extortion and fraud. The first two charges were dropped, and Trindade was acquitted of fraud. More

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      Daniel Snyder to Buy Out Other Owners of Washington NFL Team

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      The league is expected to approve a measure that will allow Daniel Snyder to buy total control of the team.Seeking to move past a year of tumult over the team’s former name and a sexual harassment investigation of its front office, the owner of the Washington Football Team is close to a deal with fellow league owners that will give him greater control over the organization while he pays a fine for executives’ misconduct.The arrangement effectively resolves two pressing issues: a protracted boardroom fight over ownership that spilled out into the open and an investigation by the N.F.L. into allegations that women who worked for the team were sexually harassed by staff members, a number of whom have already been dismissed.The league owners next week are expected to approve a special waiver that would allow the owner, Daniel Snyder, to take on an additional $450 million in debt in order to buy out minority partners he has been battling, according to a copy of the resolution reviewed by The New York Times. The N.F.L.’s finance committee last week unanimously recommended that the full cohort of owners waive the limit of debt a buyer can take on to buy into a team. Snyder will have to repay the money by March 2028.Support for Snyder’s purchase comes as the N.F.L.’s investigation into sexual harassment claims made against former Washington Football Team executives concludes. In the coming days, Commissioner Roger Goodell may address the findings collected by Beth Wilkinson, a Washington-based lawyer whom Snyder hired last summer to investigate after several Washington Post articles reported widespread sexual harassment of women who worked for the team over a 15-year span. The N.F.L. took over her investigation from Snyder.Snyder’s pending purchase of his partners’ shares and the end of Wilkinson’s investigation into the team’s internal culture come after a chaotic year for the franchise. The team decided to drop its nickname and logo last July after years of criticism from some Native American activists who considered it a racist slur and threats from major corporations that they would end sponsorships if the name stayed. The Washington Football Team is still reviewing possible new names and logos.Since then, Washington sought to rectify its 3-13 record from the 2019 season by firing numerous front office executives and hiring a new coach, Ron Rivera, at the beginning of 2020. In August, Rivera learned he had cancer and began treatments for it, but he coached the full season, leading the team back to the playoffs for the first time in five years.To try to revive the club’s tattered image, Snyder has hired several new executives, including Jason Wright, the N.F.L.’s first Black team president. A coed dance team will perform on game days, replacing the cheerleading program, which had been overseen by one of the since-fired executives who had been accused of sexual harassment.Snyder will pay $875 million for the 40.5 percent of the team owned by Dwight Schar, Robert Rothman and Frederick Smith, ensuring his total control of the franchise he bought a majority stake of in 1999.When the purchase is completed, which is expected shortly, Snyder and his family will hold 100 percent of the club and end a very public fight with Rothman, Schar and Smith, who bought into the team in 2003. Last spring, the three men banded together to try to sell their stakes after Snyder declined to pay them annual dividends as a way to conserve the team’s cash with the 2020 N.F.L. season still in doubt because of the coronavirus pandemic.In August, the private disagreement over distributed dividends turned into corporate warfare that spilled into public view. Snyder all but accused Schar of orchestrating a smear campaign against him by contending in court documents that Schar facilitated the spread of negative information about him to the media with the hope that bad press would ultimately force Snyder to sell his majority stake. In that situation, the trio’s shares would have garnered a higher price if the team was sold as a whole.The three minority owners — Schar, a real estate developer; Rothman, an asset manager; and Smith, the chairman of FedEx — turned against Snyder, accusing him in federal court of bad-faith dealing and malfeasance.Even as Wilkinson was brought in last July to conduct an investigation into team executives’ conduct toward female employees, the N.F.L. had hired in late June former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to untangle the squabble among the Washington Football Team’s owners.The Washington Post reported that two women had accused Snyder, 56, in separate episodes of harassment dating to 2004 — which he denied — and that he reached a financial settlement in 2009 with a female former executive who had accused him of sexual misconduct during a trip on a private jet.Now, with the investigation into his and other team employees’ conduct wrapping up and the conclusion of his boardroom battle in sight, Snyder can focus on another major task: deciding how to rebrand the football team whose future is entirely under his control. 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      Why Some Women Don’t Want Antonio Brown in the Super Bowl

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021Why the Chiefs Will WinTom Brady vs. Patrick MahomesA Super Bowl Trip Is Worth the Risk to Some Fans17 Recipes for Tiny TailgatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports of the TimesWhy Some Women Don’t Want Antonio Brown in the Super BowlThe Buccaneers receiver has been one of the most electrifying players in the N.F.L., but he is facing accusations of sexual assault and harassment.Antonio Brown of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has been one of the best receivers in the N.F.L., but has faced serious accusations of abuse against women.Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesFeb. 6, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ETGet over it.That was the message Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Antonio Brown tried to convey this past week.The past doesn’t matter, he seemed to say. With the Super Bowl upon us, the only concern should be about his ability to catch passes on Sunday.Brown’s preferred talking points were his love for quarterback Tom Brady, his team’s drive to beat the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs, and his comeback.That comeback did not involve an injury that eroded his electrifying talent on the field. Those skills have remained sufficiently intact for Brown, 32, to find a plush spot in the N.F.L., in spite of the history he did not want to discuss at a requisite pre-Super Bowl news conference.“I’d be doing a disservice if I talked about things that are not a focus of this game,” he said.Those things include withering verbal abuse aimed at the mother of three of his children and recorded on video. And an accusation of sexual harassment that was described in detail in a national magazine. And a looming lawsuit accusing him of rape, a claim that Brown has vociferously denied.Now, he is one win from a championship ring after off-the-field trouble sent his career into one of the most stunning tumbles experienced by a star athlete in recent memory.Tampa Bay gambled on him in a way that no other team dared, signing Brown to a one-year contract in October after he had been out of the game for a season and a half. The Buccaneers did not heed commentators who, looking at the pattern of trouble around Brown, said he needed time away from the league — possibly for good, but at least until his lawsuit was resolved.The team also chose to look past the #MeToo movement and its fundamental lesson: Women with stories of pain, and of powerlessness in their dealings with famous men, should be heard and taken seriously.Let’s remember that one in four women are subjected to abuse by intimate partners during their lifetimes, according to a government report. Let’s think of what they endure every time they see athletes like Brown, with unresolved accusations around them, take the field.Let’s listen to Brenda Tracy, who describes herself as the survivor of a 1998 gang rape by a group of men that included two Oregon State football players. The players weren’t criminally charged, but they were suspended by the coach for making “a bad choice.” Tracy became an advocate for abused women, working toward change by sharing her story with anyone who will listen. Colleges across the country have hired her to speak to their athletic teams.“I won’t be watching the Super Bowl this year,” she told me. “With Antonio Brown out there, it’s just too much.”Ahead of the big game, Brown characterized himself as a changed man — humbled, grateful, and in control. He spoke in quiet, careful tones. He gave the sense that he sees the accusations as a chance to prove that he can conquer adversity, mostly by catching Brady’s passes.“I want my legacy to be a guy that was persistent, a guy that never gave up, no matter the odds, no matter the hate,” Brown said.Tom Brady said recently that he and Brown had “connected right away” as Patriots teammates. Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressWhat he really wanted was to move on.Let’s not. Let’s look at the claims, made by a personal trainer named Britney Taylor, in the lawsuit.In court filings, Taylor said that Brown assaulted her twice in 2017. She also asserted that Brown raped her in 2018.Through his legal team, the wide receiver has denied the accusations. He has countersued, accusing Taylor of defamation. Brown and Taylor were involved in a “consensual personal relationship,” his lawyer said in a statement.It is important to remember that the court proceedings can still be avoided if the two parties reach a settlement. It is not a criminal trial, in which Brown would face the possibility of prison.But Britney Taylor isn’t alone.In a Sports Illustrated article, an artist made detailed accusations of sexual harassment by Brown. The wide receiver also once targeted the mother of three of his children with a profane tirade and then posted a video of the incident on social media.On Twitter in 2018, he threatened a reporter from ESPN’s The Undefeated who wrote an article about Brown’s thorny personal life and turbocharged social media use. Brown ended up apologizing through a statement: “It is not OK to threaten anyone, and I need to be better spiritually and professionally.”That year he also settled a lawsuit that accused him of throwing heavy furniture from his 14th-floor apartment and nearly hitting a toddler.Brown’s exasperating behavior as a teammate prompted the Pittsburgh Steelers to trade him to the Oakland Raiders in 2019. Just before the start of the season, the Raiders dumped him for similar reasons.He landed briefly in New England, early in Brady’s final season with the Patriots. The lawsuit accusing Brown of rape soon became public, followed by the artist’s accusations of harassment. His third employer of that year cut him loose.Brady, who said recently that he and Brown had “connected right away” in New England, endorsed Tampa Bay’s decision to bring the receiver aboard midway through this season. When Brown arrived in town, he initially lived in Brady’s home.Yet Brown and the Buccaneers seem like an odd pairing. The team has two full-time female coaches, and there were only eight in the entire league this season. The Women’s Sports Foundation has honored Coach Bruce Arians for supporting women in the N.F.L.But Arians proved that talent matters more than principle.Sadly, that’s too often the bottom line for male stars in major sports. If you are accused of abusing or harassing women and are easy to replace, your job is probably gone. It doesn’t take a conviction, trial or arrest. (See Jared Porter, the former New York Mets general manager who was fired after accusations that he had repeatedly sent inappropriate texts to a female reporter.)If you are a star, well, your entitlement is virtually unlimited.Brown signed with the Buccaneers just after completing an eight-game suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. The reason for that penalty? He had pleaded no contest to burglary and assault charges after a dispute with a truck driver.He had every opportunity to express remorse for that incident this past week. He did not. So again, let’s listen instead to women, to people who won’t be in front of a huge global audience this weekend.Mindy Murphy runs The Spring of Tampa Bay, the largest shelter serving domestic violence survivors in Hillsborough County, home to the Buccaneers.When the N.F.L. tried to change its culture a few years ago, after Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was caught striking his fiancée, Murphy helped conduct training with the Buccaneers on abuse.Now she feels disillusioned.Seeing Brown chase a Super Bowl ring is a “disservice to what survivors have experienced,” she said. “When a team in the N.F.L. says, ‘We are going to hire him, and he deserves a second chance,’ or they say, ‘We don’t know for sure what’s happened, because it happened behind closed doors,’ they reinforce the idea that it’s not a good idea to speak up.”Remember that while watching the Buccaneers in the Super Bowl, and also remember Brown’s past.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fight for Washington N.F.L. Team Could Tighten Snyder's Grip on It

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFight for Washington N.F.L. Team May Tighten Owner’s Grip on ItWashington’s owner, Daniel Snyder, is working to buy out three minority partners, including one he has accused of running a smear campaign against him.The Washington Football Team majority owner Daniel Snyder could expand his stake in the team.Credit…Brad Mills/USA Today Sports, via ReutersKen Belson and Dec. 19, 2020, 8:37 p.m. ETBy the end of this summer, Daniel Snyder, the majority owner of the N.F.L.’s Washington Football Team, was facing fire from many sides. Fans had long blamed him for the team’s abysmal performance. Now civil rights groups were criticizing Snyder for waiting so long to jettison a team name and logo that they considered racist, and women’s activists were aghast after news media reports detailed a culture of sexual harassment in the team’s front office.In a normal corporate setting, any one of these troubles might have led to a leader’s ouster. Instead, Snyder, a member of the N.F.L.’s cozy club of billionaire owners, may emerge from months of crisis with an even tighter hold on one of the most lucrative franchises in the league. Snyder is in talks to buy out three of his partners, and the sale price may be 40 percent less than they were asking in June.According to three people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak publicly about it, Snyder would pay up to $900 million for the 40 percent of the club owned by the three partners: Frederick W. Smith, the chairman of FedEx; the financier Robert Rothman; and Dwight Schar, a real estate developer. The deal must be approved by the league.Representatives for Snyder and the partners’ banker declined to comment on the talks. The N.F.L. did not respond to a request seeking comment.The deal, if completed and approved, would end one of the more nasty and tangled ownership battles in the league in years, a bitter divorce that has included accusations of bad faith, malfeasance and mudslinging in a league that prefers such infighting be kept behind closed doors.Sales of shares in N.F.L. teams are normally cloaked in secrecy, with information tightly guarded by the principals and their lawyers and bankers. The boardroom battle in Washington, though, spilled into courts from California to Virginia and even New Delhi before finally landing in the lap of an arbitrator appointed by the N.F.L. to sort out the mess.The court papers in the various lawsuits that have been filed offer an unusual look at an eight-month dispute that has included the use of burner phones, profane text messages, accusations of leaks of credible and fabricated information to the news media, and threats of extortion, according to transcripts of phone calls, text messages and emails found in court filings and other documents reviewed by The New York Times.The fight over the team began in the spring, when the limited partners accused Snyder of mismanagement of the team he has owned since 1999, including improperly throwing them off the board, making financial transactions without their approval and trying to block the sale of their shares to outside investors.Snyder claims, in court filings, that Schar, in retribution, schemed to leak to the news media negative information about Snyder’s personal life and operation of the team in the hope that it would be damaging enough to compel him to sell it. The sale of the entire team — not only Snyder’s share but also the stakes owned by Schar, Smith and Rothman — would significantly inflate the value of the nonvoting shares the three minority partners have been trying to sell since this spring.A lawyer for Schar did not respond to a request for comment.The team, 6-7 but on track for a playoff spot, has been playing better this season under a new coach. It is at the top of its chaotic division with three games left in the regular season.Yet Snyder has been trailed by controversy, including accusations from cheerleaders that they were sexually harassed and intimidated on the job by well-heeled supporters and team employees, and the allegations of widespread sexual harassment in the team’s front office that remain under investigation by the league.But, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations, N.F.L. owners believe Schar crossed a line in seeking to publicly malign Snyder. Even so, kicking out an owner or part owner is seen as a rare, last resort, and so they are pushing for a settlement in which Snyder would buy out the partners.Under the plan representatives for the partners are working out, Schar’s proceeds would be reduced by millions of dollars as a penalty for trying to publicly undermine Snyder, according to three people aware of the potential penalties. Even then, he will walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars.“The most important thing for the league is its image,” said Upton Bell, a longtime team executive and the son of the former N.F.L. commissioner Bert Bell, speaking generally about ownership disputes. “They want to make it look like it’s Disney World when it’s not. It’s business, it’s not a moral universe.”The fight, at heart, is over money.The limited partners grew disenchanted in May when, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic that was threatening the coming N.F.L. season, Snyder halted the payment of annual dividends to Schar, Rothman, Smith and other limited partners. He did not explain the decision, but it was consistent with similar steps taken by other owners.In a letter reviewed by The Times, Schar’s representative then asked Snyder for the team’s financial records for the past two years, including cost-cutting measures. In early June, Snyder was told that Schar and Rothman had joined Smith, who had been trying to sell his shares for about a year, in putting their stakes on the market. This created a 40 percent block that Rothman argued in a letter to Snyder’s banker was worth $1.5 billion, based on the team’s total valuation.Angered that his longtime partners were shopping their shares, Snyder threw them off the board of the team’s holding company in June. The partners asked the N.F.L. to settle the dispute, claiming that Snyder failed to hold board meetings and did not get proper approval for financial transactions. The league appointed an arbitrator to the case at the end of June.Amid the crossfire of letters between lawyers, Snyder asserted that Schar began a long-shot smear campaign designed to embarrass him and force him to sell the entire team. Snyder has long insisted that he intends to leave his controlling share to his children.Dwight Schar, a limited partner in the team, could be bought out.  Credit…George Gojkovich/Getty ImagesKey to the scheme, court filings show, was Mary Ellen Blair. She was an executive assistant to him until 2017 who, at the behest of Schar, helped pass negative information about Snyder to the news media. Between July and October, Blair and Schar spoke 157 times on the phone, for a combined 11.6 hours, according to phone records obtained by Snyder’s lawyers and filed in court.During that same period, Blair dialed or received 123 calls from telephone numbers associated with The Washington Post, according to court filings. There were text messages, too, Snyder said. “Call me ASAP Mr Schar just called me great news for u call me ASAP please,” she wrote in one of several texts to a journalist at The Post who contributed to a blockbuster article in which 15 female former team employees revealed rampant, longstanding harassment of women employees. (“The idea is to force Snyder to sell,” Blair texted to a friend.)The Post article in July did not directly connect Snyder to the harassment claims. But he hired a Washington-based law firm, Wilkinson Walsh, to look into the allegations. The N.F.L. took over the investigation, which is continuing.“While I was unaware of these allegations until they surfaced in the media, I take full responsibility for the culture of our organization,” Snyder said in a statement after a second article by The Washington Post linked to him to two allegations of harassment, both of which he denied.As the substantiated reporting got people talking on social media, less reputable outlets tried to capitalize on online interest in Snyder. The day The Post published its first report of chaos in the front office, a website owned by an Indian company, Media Arts Entertainment WorldWide, published two items about Snyder. One falsely linked him to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Representatives for Media Arts Entertainment admitted they had relied on sources including a Reddit post, and removed the two items from their website. But Snyder sued the publication for defamation in August in India. (The case is ongoing.)Snyder used the suit filed in New Delhi to search for ties to Schar. His lawyers filed a string of discovery motions in federal court in the United States and obtained Blair’s phone records and text messages, which showed her communications with Schar and his daughter, Tracy, who, records show, made or received 44 calls to or from Blair. The records also showed that Tracy Schar bought Blair a burner phone to escape detection. When Snyder’s lawyers confronted Blair about her phone records late this fall, she gave a sworn declaration that has been reviewed by The Times. In it, she said she and Dwight Schar discussed an allegation that Snyder had sexually harassed a former female team employee in 2009.“Schar knew I would take that information about that employee’s sexual harassment claim to the Washington Post, and Schar was encouraging me to share the information with the Washington Post,” Blair said in the declaration.It is unclear if she shared the information. A spokeswoman for The Post declined to comment.Two investigations conducted in 2009, one by the team and another by an outside law firm hired by the team, said they were unable to substantiate the woman’s claim that Snyder had accosted her in April 2009 on a flight to Washington from Las Vegas. The team fired the woman because it said she lied to the team’s lawyers.To avoid any potential negative publicity if the woman sued Snyder, the team paid her a financial settlement and five people, including Snyder and the accuser, signed nondisclosure agreements, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.A spokesman for Snyder declined to discuss the settlement.Even so, Schar tried to use the settlement against Snyder. In late July, he called Norman Chirite, one of Snyder’s lawyers, and said that “the story was out” about the 2009 settlement and its public disclosure is “going to kill Dan,” according to Chirite, who gave a signed declaration that was reviewed by The Times.Schar said Snyder would have a “horrible existence” when the settlement was made public. “Dan should just sell the team,” Chirite recalled Schar’s saying. “He won’t have a choice.”Now, the reverse may happen: Snyder will not only keep the team, but possibly tighten his grip on it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More