FedEx on Thursday became the first major corporate backer of the Washington Redskins to call on the team to change its name, the most significant development yet amid mounting financial and political pressure on team owner Daniel Snyder in the long-running controversy.In a one-sentence statement issued Thursday afternoon, Memphis-based FedEx said, “We have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name.”
Even without elaboration from the company, the statement signals a dramatic pivot by one of the Redskins’ more loyal, long-standing corporate backers — a Fortune 100 company that for more than two decades has tied its brand to that of the team.
The company’s request comes less than a week after a group of more than 85 investment firms and shareholders representing $620 billion in assets called on FedEx, Nike and PepsiCo to sever ties with the team unless Snyder changes its name.
And it represents another shift in a battle in which the terrain has shifted from moral appeals to business and political tactics during a period in which the country is reexamining statues, monuments, symbols and corporate names and logos that some Americans have never questioned but others long have considered a source of offense, insult or pain.
If prominent Redskins sponsors feel sufficient pressure to dissociate from the team, Snyder’s bottom line would take a significant hit at the same time he faces political roadblocks in building a new stadium.
FedEx, which ranks 47th on the 2020 Fortune 500 list, holds the naming rights to the team’s existing stadium in Landover, Md., through 2026 under a 27-year, $205 million deal signed in November 1999. Moreover, the company’s CEO, Frederick W. Smith, is a minority investor in the team, believed to have a 10 percent share.