Comcast to buy Snider Family Share of Flyers Ownership

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

The Philadelphia Flyers will now be completed owned by Comcast, as the company will buy the remaining share of the Flyers owned by Ed Snider's estate.

The sale would mean the Snider family does not have a stake in ownership for the first time in the team's 50-year history. The terms of the sale will not be disclosed, but the Snider estate holds a 24 percent stake in the franchise. 

The deal is expected to be finalized in the next month and would mean Comcast Corporation holds a 100 percent ownership stake in the Flyers, all four Flyers Skate Zone locations, the Wells Fargo Center and Spectra businesses.

Dave Scott, president and CEO of Comcast Spectacor, will attend a meeting Friday with Gary Bettman and the NHL Board of Governors. Scott would fulfill Snider's role within the Flyers organization, working with Paul Holmgren and Ron Hextall and serving as the final word when signing off on major decisions.

Prior to his passing in April 2016, Snider had selected Scott as the successor to his role. According to Comcast Corporation chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, Snider's family had planned for this sale in the event of his passing.

"Ed had put these wheels in motion years ago," Roberts said to the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He wanted to provide for his family in other ways – and this does that for him.

"One of the things I was very proud of was that Ed said to me toward the end, 'All my friends told me to be ready, that I would no longer be an owner of the Flyers one year after this partnership was formed,'" Roberts said. "And at his funeral — or celebration of his life — I said that the only thing that separated us as partners was his passing away. But he structured the deal. He could get out at any time because he was not used to being a minority partner. And we structured it so that if we wanted to own 100 percent, we could after the first year."

The Snider family will still remain actively involved in Snider's other legacy, the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation, while Scott and Roberts have indicated that though the family will no longer have ownership stake, they plan to remain connected to the Snider family.

"I don't view this as a typical corporate structure," Scott said to the Philadelphia Inquirer. "This is an entrepreneurial company that has thrived doing things like [rewarding former players]. We should not want to touch the fantastic structure. We want the Flyers to be the Flyers. A family."