BroBible
The NFL and MLB players’ unions and their officials are under federal investigation for their deals with the licensing group OneTeam Partners (OTP). FBI agents have reportedly even contacted MLB players directly, but are not targets in the investigation.
According to The Athletic, OneTeam Partners, which is co-owned by the players unions for five major sports leagues, signed a resolution last June that would grant the unions “profits units,” which could then potentially be turned into cash.
This move raised red flags with the NFLPA because the Lloyd Howell Jr., the head of the NFL players union, and the leader of the Major League Baseball players union, Tony Clark, are both on the board of directors for OneTeam Partners.
“The explicit goal throughout the process was to financially enrich the individuals who serve on the OTP Board as labor organization representatives,” The Athletic reports an NFLPA official wrote to lawyers about the plan. “… the idea was to pay the money into the unions, then the individuals.”
OneTeam Partners told The Athletic that the plan was never implemented.
“In early 2024, OneTeam initiated an exploratory review to determine whether the company could lawfully offer incentive-based compensation to current and prospective Board members,” OneTeam Partners told The Athletic. “This exploratory effort was part of a broader initiative to assess strategies for attracting high-caliber, independent talent.
“Following the legal advice of a labor law expert, it was determined that the best practice, if implemented, was to make grants to the respective players associations.”
The NFLPA (44 percent) and MLBPA (22 percent) together own two-thirds of OneTeam Partners. Outside investors own 30 percent of OTP. Players unions for Major League Soccer, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team and the Women’s National Basketball Association also own a fraction of that amount of the company. The NFLPA has four seats on OneTeam’s board, and the MLBPA has three seats. The MLS, USWNT and WNBA share one seat on the board.
Earlier this month, Awful Announcing reported that NFLPA in-house counsel Heather McPhee stated in a memo to the NFLPA executive committee that she had been instructed to stop working on anything related to OneTeam Partners. Both the NFLPA and MLBPA have reportedly retained outside counsel to deal with the FBI investigation.
OneTeam Partners is no stranger to controversy. In 2022, it was revealed that college athletes were receiving a minuscule portion of revenue from jersey sales, while OneTeam was taking home 30 percent.
In 2023, the NFL Player’s Association announced that it was unable to collect $41.8 million from OneTeam Partners. A debt that was likely tied to the collapse of the NFT market.
Then, in 2024, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia claimed that he had not approved the use of his name, image and likeness for merchandise that was being sold. It turned out that he had, in fact, signed a group licensing deal with OneTeam Partners that he apparently didn’t realize he had signed (and possibly many other college athletes did as well).
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