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The Denver Broncos are for sale. And a lot of people want to buy it.
Broncos CEO Joe Ellis declined Monday to disclose any of the candidates, citing confidentiality requirements. But while Ellie refused to give names, he went with numbers.
“It’s more than five and less than 20,” Ellis said of 9News.com’s Mike Klis. “And there’s a lot of people who would like to be in any role, whether they’re . . . the dominant owner [or not]. It’s been a pretty robust process so far. . . and I’m going to stick to the timeline that I think I said in January, which is that we should have new ownership by the start of the regular season. I cannot guarantee that.”
Ellis added that there are “a lot of qualified people who have a significant interest” in purchasing the franchise and are “passionate about the team.”
Passion doesn’t matter. cash will do. At the end of the day, the highest bidder wins. It doesn’t matter whether they like football, dislike football, know football, don’t know football.
Two potential names who know football fairly well are John Elway and Peyton Manning. Both were mentioned as potentially involved in property groups. But not as the controlling owner given the extreme financial demands.
“You asked, I’d tell you,” Ellis said to Elway and Manning. “And they can talk for themselves about what they are asking and what their interest is. Certainly I think both are well accepted by a group when a group or potential owner wants to include them in the group. We’ll see how that affects it.”
Again, all that matters is how much money is shaken out of the pockets of the highest bidder. Especially for a team being sold by a trust. The goal will be to get as much money as possible. So if Elway or Manning want to work with the winning horse, they need to find the one with the largest feed bag.