Dan Snyder trivia | 40 facts about the entrepreneur

Dan Snyder is an entrepreneur, famous for owning the Washington Redskins. How many things do we know about him though?

Let’s find out more about Dan Snyder!

1. His full name is Daniel Marc Snyder.
2. He was born on November 23rd in 1964 in Maryland.
3. He is the son of Arlette and Gerald Seymour “Gerry” Snyder.
4. His family is Jewish.
5. His father was a freelance writer who wrote for United Press International and National Geographic.
6. Dan Snyder attended Hillandale Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland.
7. At age 12, he moved to Henley-on-Thames, a small town near London, where he attended private school.
8. At age 14, he returned to the United States and lived with his grandmother in Queens, New York, but one year later, his family moved back to Maryland and he graduated from Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville, Maryland.
9. His first job was at B. Dalton’s bookstore in the White Flint Mall.
10. At 17, Snyder experienced his first business failure when he partnered with his father to sell bus-trip packages to Washington Capitals fans to see their hockey team play in Philadelphia.
11. By age 20, he had dropped out of the University of Maryland, College Park[, and was running his own business.
12. He was leasing jets to fly college students to spring break in Fort Lauderdale and the Caribbean.
13. Snyder claims to have cleared US$1 million running the business out of his parents’ bedroom with a friend and several telephone lines.
14. Snyder courted real estate entrepreneur Mortimer Zuckerman, whose US News & World Report was also interested in the college market and who agreed to finance his push to publish Campus USA, a magazine for college students.
15. Zuckerman and Fred Drasner, co-publisher of Zuckerman’s New York Daily News, invested $3 million in Campus USA.
16. The venture did not generate enough paid advertising and was forced to close after two years.
17. He is an American businessman.
18. He is the majority owner of the Washington Redskins of the National Football League (NFL).
19. Dan Snyder bought the Redskins from Jack Kent Cooke’s estate in 1999.
20. He is also the founder of Snyder Communications.
21. In 1989, Snyder and his sister Michele founded a wallboard advertising (the sale of advertisements placed on boards inside buildings) company with seed money from his father, who took a second mortgage on his property in England, and his sister, who maxed out her credit cards at $35,000.
22. he company was named Snyder Communications LP, and it was really successful.
23. In an initial public offering for SNC in September 1996, Daniel Snyder became the youngest ever CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed company at the age of 32.
24. Snyder’s top investors, including media mogul Barry Diller, New York investor Dan Lufkin, and Democratic Party icon Robert Strauss, earned significant returns on their initial investment.
25. Mortimer Zuckerman and Fred Drasner, whom Snyder owed $3 million from the failure of his first business venture, were given company stock.
26. It actually ended up being worth over $500 million.
27. His parents sold their stock in the company for over $60 million.
28. In May 1999, Snyder purchased the Redskins and Jack Kent Cooke Stadium for $800 million following the death of previous owner Jack Kent Cooke.
29. At the time, it was the most expensive transaction in sporting history
30. The deal was financed largely through borrowed money, including $340 million borrowed from Société Générale and $155 million debt assumed on the stadium.
31. In order to pay down the team’s debt, in 2003, he sold 15% of the team to real estate developer Dwight Schar for $200 million, 15% to Florida financier Robert Rothman for a like amount, and 5% to Frederick W. Smith, the founder of Federal Express (commonly known as FedEx, leaving him with a 65% ownership interest.
32. Since Snyder became owner, the Redskins’ annual revenue increased from more than $100 million a year when Snyder took over the team in 1999 to around $245 million
33. As of 2017, Snyder serves on six National Football League committees, including appointments to the Broadcast Committee, the Business Ventures Committee, the Digital Media Committee (for which he serves as Co-Chair), the International Committee, the Stadium Committee and the Hall of Fame Committee, which oversees the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
34. Separately, he is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Pro Football Hall of Fame
35. In 1994, he married Tanya Ivey, a former fashion model from Atlanta, who now is a national spokesperson for breast cancer awareness.
36. They have three children^.
37. He has also donated a lot of money to charities, and good causes.
38. He contributed $1 million to help the victims of the 11 September attack.
39. In 2000, Snyder founded the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation, which is active in the Washington, D.C. area
40. n 2014, Snyder formed the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation to provide opportunities and resources to aid Tribal communities.