Dan Snyder, the owner of Washington’s football team, has purchased a $100 million superyacht that its builders say will “redefine the boundaries of luxury yacht construction,” including a two-deck Imax theater and a helipad.
The 305-foot yacht, christened “Lady S,” took five years to build, according to Dutch boat builder Feadship. While Feadship has declined to name the owner publicly, the Guardian’s wealth correspondent broke the news that Snyder purchased the boat.
In an unattributed comment provided by Feadship when the ship was unveiled in October, the owners said they would “like to thank Feadship director Jan-Bart Verkuyl and everyone at the yard for taking us on such an amazing journey.”
The boat came to fruition after “working hand in hand with the experienced owners,” Feadship wrote. The Snyders bought a 224-foot superyacht in 2011 named “Lady Anne” which cost them $70 million and was one of the 100 largest yachts in the world at the time.
“Lady S” is the first yacht to boast an Imax (in addition to its four VIP suites, each of which has its own 8K TVs), which cost an additional $3 million, per The Guardian. The ship had to be designed around the Imax, because getting the AV certification from the company “was the most important thing for the owner,” a naval architect who helped design the boat told the newspaper.
Snyder is the 368th wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, which lists his net worth at $2.2 billion. Based in Potomac, Snyder purchased Washington’s NFL team for $800 million two decades ago, and his tenure has been plagued by scandals over the team’s name, a dictionary-defined slur; decreasing attendance at home games; rapidly changing head coaches; allegations of “pimping out” cheerleaders; lawsuits against media outlets; and the general disillusionment of the fan base—all of this while the team has not appeared at any conference title game or Super Bowl.
The Tampa Bay Times wrote in a column called “Think your NFL owner is bad? Dan Snyder’s always worse” that “no sports enterprise in America wears the mark of the pentagram like the team run by Snyder.”
Still, none of this has stopped D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser from advocating on behalf of Snyder, working alongside Congressional Republicans to grant D.C. the right to use the RFK campus for a new 60,000-seat stadium for Snyder’s team. “The mayor has made it quite clear in the past that she wants the Washington football team home, period,” Bowser’s spokesperson, LaToya Foster, told DCist over the summer. So far, her office has declined to provide details about who would pay for the stadium. The councilmember who represents the area, Charles Allen, is opposed to the football team coming back to the site, and more than 3,500 people have signed a petition that reads: “As a D.C. resident, I am against a deal that gives away a single square foot of land or a single District tax dollar to build a new stadium for billionaire NFL owner Dan Snyder.”
While Bowser has been in office, D.C. has helped finance the opening of sports arenas in different ways. The city paid about $150 million to provide land free of charge to D.C. United on a long-term lease, and the team then paid to build Audi Field. D.C.’s entertainment and sports agency paid 90 percent of the cost for the new St. Elizabeths-based home to the Mystics, e-sports, and more.
A stadium could cost around $1 billion, about ten times the cost of Snyder’s new yacht. Like a stadium, the yacht has facilities for playing different sports, including football, basketball, golf, and volleyball. According to Feadship, the yacht will remain covered during the winter and “only be seen in all her splendid glory when completed next spring.”
Rachel Kurzius


