Antonio Brown’s presence with the Arena Football League’s Albany Empire hasn’t gotten any easier to understand, and according to the Albany Times-Union, representatives for Brown said that the former NFL receiver doesn’t actually own the team.
Those representatives provided documents to the Times-Union that reportedly stated that the Antonio El-Allah Express Trust Enterprise owns the 95% stake in Empire, with Antonio El-Allah, a foreign citizen and the trustee.
According to the Times-Union, the Empire’s team president and a lawyer sent a letter from Brown to one of the newspaper’s reporters that said, “I want to make it very clear that I am not the owner of this team, and any claims to the contrary are completely false.”
That contradicts previous statements from Brown, who has referred to himself as an owner on social media.
It’s the latest strange twist during Brown’s tenure with the team, which plays in the same city where his father starred for the Albany Firebirds — another arena football team — in the 1990s.
Earlier this week, former head coach Damon Ware revealed on social media that players and coaches hadn’t been paid since April 21, which the team president said resulted from a payroll issue amid the ownership transfer.
But then star players were suspended following an incident on the team bus, which resulted in police getting called to the hotel.
Ware — who left the team this week and was replaced by Tom Menas, the former head coach who was fired ahead of the season — also called Brown’s initial time with the Empire a “hostile takeover.”
Brown hasn’t played in the NFL since the 2021 season, when he walked off the field in the middle of a game against the Jets.
Brown has also been the center of a myriad of off-field issues throughout his career, with the latest involving unpaid child support payments that’ve reportedly since been paid and others involving a domestic violence allegation, sexual assault and a moving truck driver assault case.
The Firebirds have won the last two Arena Football League championships, and they’ve started the 2023 campaign 1-2 entering a home game against the West Texas Warbirds on Saturday.