Earlier this week, the House Oversight Committee fired a shot across the bow of Dan Snyder’s $192 million superyacht by posting public notice that they’ll be questioning him on Thursday. This Zoom interview—part of a Congressional probe into the Commanders’ allegedly toxic workplace culture—may not occur as scheduled. Snyder doesn’t want to testify under oath, and for weeks now, he appears to have been yachting around the Mediterranean, where a Congressional subpoena would be conveniently tricky to serve. Snyder’s endgame may be to float about in luxury until after the midterms, when more favorable political winds could blow his mega-vessel home.
So where exactly is Dan Snyder while he’s failing to appear before Congress? We’ve asked an expert: the anonymous man behind Dan Snyder Yacht Tracker, a Twitter account that uses public data to trace the whereabouts of Snyder’s yacht and private jets.
Where is Dan Snyder today?
To be fair, I don’t know his location. I don’t track him, I just track the yacht and jets. But his yacht—let me check the app on my phone—the yacht is currently off a city called Porto Azzurro. It appears to be a port on an Italian island. But it’s more likely that he’s in Israel. If you follow the reporting, his lawyer said he was going to be in Israel, and his jet is currently in Israel, which matches what his lawyer said.
Got it. And if he were on his yacht today, what would that be like for him?
So, the scale of these things is just huge. His yacht is, like, 305 feet. The yacht supposedly has up to 33 staff to cook for the Snyders and their guests and take care of things. It has an IMAX theater and a helipad. It seems like a great place to dodge subpoenas.
My understanding is that there is some sort of mini-yacht flotilla. Can you tell me about that?
Yes. So, I joke that his yacht has yachts—they’re called “tenders,” and there’s four of them. I’ve learned a lot about yachting in the past month, and I guess you don’t always sail the yacht right to the coast—you’ll have a little mini boat that comes out and then takes you to the coast or helps you go get supplies. So his miniature boats that are on the yacht with him are 34 feet long, which, you know, to the average person is basically a yacht. It’s a 34 foot long boat—it’s pretty large.
Do you consider yourself a Commanders fan?
I grew up watching the team, and I’m a fan, but not so much a fan of Dan Snyder. The whole workplace sexual harassment scandal has been disappointing. I’m still a fan of the team, but it’s just harder to watch. I haven’t gone to games in several years now.
Was there a particular moment when Dan Snyder lost you?
It’s kind of been slow moving, but I guess it was when the Washington Post had that article maybe two years ago that was horrendous—you know, allegations of workplace harassment. And there’s a story about how the team, like, took the cheerleaders to an island and took their passports and basically pimped them out, for lack of a better term—they made them hang out with all these guys, I think it was suite owners for the Commanders. So they were in a foreign country alone and had to go out almost as escorts—just hearing stuff like that, it really put a sour taste in my mouth, just disgust with the team and disappointment in the organization.
And what made you create the yacht tracking account?
I was watching the Congressional hearing with [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell in June, and Goodell showed up, but Snyder missed the hearing. Just the fact that Snyder wasn’t showing up—he didn’t make the time—I became curious about what he was doing. I heard he was in France, so I was wondering, can you learn more about where he is? I had seen people track Russian oligarchs after the invasion of Ukraine, so I knew that you could track yachts. I found a website—VesselFinder—that lets you track it for free.
There’s an accountability function to tracking the yacht, no?
Yeah, that was the whole point. There are women who have been victims of workplace sexual harassment who came forward as part of the NFL’s investigation, and the tactics that the Snyder family is reported to have used against these women—according to the Washington Post, they had private investigators show up at their homes, interview their family, call them.
So the tactics used against these women just made me feel like there needs to be accountability against Dan Snyder. If he’s on his yacht during these committee hearings, then where’s his yacht? There’s supposedly a Zoom deposition tomorrow. So, where’s his yacht tomorrow? Where are his jets? I wanted to hold him accountable for saying, Hey, I’m too busy to show up for a Congressional hearing. Where is this guy? Can we know a little bit more about what he’s doing?
It’s wild that someone can be sunning himself in the Mediterranean when Congress is trying to ask about allegations of sexual harassment.
Yeah, definitely. And if you or I were under a subpoena or had any type of court or legal proceedings, we couldn’t go and leave the country because we wanted to avoid it. But a billionaire can get away with it. And it’s just shameful. You shouldn’t have to be subjected to sexual harassment for working in a job. If the NFL is going to be a billion dollar brand doing all these different things to attract female fans, I think there needs to be accountability when there’s horrible behavior. It needs to be investigated. If there’s 200 pages or whatever it was on Deflategate, there needs to be a report given on the sexual harassment allegations and an appropriate punishment meted out.
So if you were on the House Oversight Committee, what would you ask Dan Snyder?
Yeah, oh, gosh. I’d probably ask him what he thinks should happen, what he thinks a fair punishment should be. I go back to the Deshaun Watson case. In the case of Deshaun Watson [the Cleveland Browns quarterback facing sexual misconduct allegations], he gets punished. And rightly so. But there’s a whole angle of, quite frankly, race. Because you have white, male NFL owners, billionaires getting away scot free. [Dallas Cowboys owner] Jerry Jones has had allegations of sexual harassment. [Patriots owner] Robert Kraft had allegations that he, you know, went to massage parlors. But the owners always escape, and then you have an African American player getting punished. The NFL has said owners are held to a higher standard than players, but there’s no evidence of this higher standard.
You seem to love antagonizing Dan Snyder, so can you tell me who has a bigger yacht than his?
Yeah. There’s yacht rankings, and I believe his yacht is ranked 74th largest in the world. For a time, I think he had the largest yacht for an NFL owner. But now Jerry Jones, I believe, has eclipsed him. I think Jerry Jones’s yacht is ranked, like, 45th. And I believe there’s another NFL owner that might have a bigger yacht too.
I tweeted at one point that Snyder was parked next to [Rams owner] Stan Kroenke’s yacht, or what’s rumored to be his yacht. And while [Kroenke’s] yacht is smaller—it’s like four feet smaller, or four meters smaller—the Rams won the Super Bowl, so they have Super Bowl rings at least.
There’s this whole culture of one-upmanship and billionaires showing off, like, ‘Hey who has the biggest yacht?’ If you make the money, then I guess good for you. But when there are sexual harassment allegations, and mismanagement of the team, and when you’re using the yacht to dodge a Congressional subpoena, it just creates outrage.
