President Donald Trump wants the planned stadium for the Washington Commanders, an NFL team based in the nation\u2019s capital, to be named after him.<\/p>\n
A senior White House source told ESPN<\/a> there has been back-channel communication between the administration and a member of the team\u2019s ownership about his wish.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s what the president wants, and it will probably happen,\u201d the source added.<\/p>\n The new $3.7 billion stadium, approved<\/a> in September and expected to open by 2030, will be constructed at the old RFK Stadium site on the Anacostia River, which served as the team\u2019s home from 1961 to 1996.<\/p>\n \u201cThat would be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told<\/a> ESPN via email on Friday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n The White House and a Commanders spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fortune\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n An unmanned team source told ESPN that there have been no formal conversations yet with Trump regarding his request, though they may come soon, as the president plans<\/a> to be in attendance for the Commanders\u2019 home game against the Detroit Lions on Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Billionaire Josh Harris leads the ownership group of the Commanders, and is expected to host Trump as his guest at the game, according to ESPN. Trump is also expected<\/a> to participate in halftime activities honoring military veterans.<\/p>\n But the decision to put Trump\u2019s name on the new stadium may not be solely up to the team, a source with firsthand knowledge of the process told ESPN.<\/p>\n The Commanders own the new stadium\u2019s naming rights, presumably to sell to a corporate sponsor.\u00a0 But the District of Columbia Council, which approved the project, would likely decide whether to commemorate an individual in the name of the stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n The D.C. Council will lease the stadium to the Commanders and the National Park Service, which manages the 180-acre federal government land the 65,000-seat stadium will be built on.<\/p>\n \u201cThe team doesn\u2019t have the authority. They can\u2019t name the stadium \u2026 on their own,\u201d the unnamed source told ESPN. \u201cThe city would be involved in that decision, and the Park Service would be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Most NFL teams have sold their naming rights to corporate sponsors for hundreds of millions of dollars\u2014but the unnamed source with knowledge of Trump\u2019s wishes told ESPN that Trump doesn\u2019t want to buy the name or have a corporate sponsor buy it for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe has cards to play. He can make it very difficult, through government environmental approvals and other things, to make sure everyone who wants this stadium to be built will join to put his name on it,\u201d the source with knowledge of the stadium deal told ESPN. \u201cTrump has plenty of cards to play to get his way.\u201d<\/p>\n The D.C. Council and the National Park Service didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Trump has made demands on the team before. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and Harris announced<\/a> that the Commanders\u2019 new stadium would be built in Washington in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in July, Trump threatened<\/a> to block the construction if Harris did not change the team name from Commanders back to the Redskins, which had drawn criticism<\/a> from Native American groups for being offensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Washington franchise changed its logo and name in 2020, and was called the Washington Football Team for two years. The Commanders have had their current name since their 2022 season and have said they will keep it, despite Trump\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump wants the planned stadium for the Washington Commanders, an NFL team based in the nation\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":365829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[34645,244,64,9886,69,2142,1318,454,51,268,8709,50,1232,80,62,52,5409,2058,22661,5223],"class_list":{"0":"post-365828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-american-politics","9":"tag-billionaires","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-construction","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-federal-government","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-government","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-investment","18":"tag-investors","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-nfl","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-u-s-politics","25":"tag-washington","26":"tag-washington-d-c","27":"tag-white-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115517270788607107","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}