A deal is in place. All that’s left is the approval.

The Washington Post reports that the Commanders and D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser have reached an agreement on a new facility to be built at the site of the defunct RFK Stadium. The deal is expected to be announced on Monday in a joint news conference featuring Bowser and Commanders owner Josh Harris.

Approval will still be needed both from the D.C. Council and from Harris’s NFL business partners.

Prior reports pegged the stadium cost at $3 billion, with D.C. paying as little as $500 million.

An effort is underway to secure enough signatures to put a stadium initiative on the June 2025 ballot in D.C. Also, multiple D.C. Council members have expressed concern about the use of public money for the stadium.

The mayor and the team will be hoping to generate enough public support to fuel the approval process. And there is plenty of sentiment among the fan base to return the team from Maryland to D.C.

If, however, the question ends up on a ballot, it likely will fail. Even though pro football is king, the voters who don’t care about football generally outnumber those who do. Given the current public sentiment that taxpayer money shouldn’t be used to subsidize multi-billionaires, the best chance for success comes from keeping it out of the hands of the voters and hoping to get enough D.C. Council members to get behind it.

The other owners could be concerned about the deal, too. Currently, these projects typically entail a 50-50 split between private and public resources, with the team/league on the hook for overages. If the Commanders end up responsible to a significant majority of the expense, other owners could be concerned about the precedent being used against them in their own markets.