sweetheart deal

noun

plural sweetheart deals

chiefly US

: an unusually advantageous arrangement or agreement

If they wanted to leave, they could have done so before the stadium expansion and received a sweetheart deal from someplace else.

—Nick Canepa

especially : one that is obtained through personal or business connections or influence

His original 606,302 investment—most of it borrowed from a bank where he was once a director—netted him a fortune of $18.4 million, and accusations that he had benefited from a sweetheart deal.

—David Hume Kennerly

The company also used its clout to cut through the logjam of carrier requirements that had stifled innovation in the phone industry for years, essentially forcing AT&T into a sweetheart deal that put Apple in the driver's seat.

—Brian X. Chen

Examples of sweetheart deal in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

One of the city’s earliest political bosses was Michael Cassius McDonald, a gambling maven in the years after the Civil War who was party to several scandals, including controversies over bribes and sweetheart deals for his companies. —Ray Long, Chicago Tribune, 8 Sep. 2024

Passengers’ relatives call it a sweetheart deal that fails to consider the lives lost. —David Koenig, Fortune, 11 Oct. 2024

Relatives of victims and their lawyers have called the settlement a sweetheart deal that fails to consider the loss of so many lives. —Claire Rush, Chicago Tribune, 5 Oct. 2024

In 2013, an initial inquiry was launched into whether Apple had engaged in sweetheart deals with Ireland to lower its tax bills. —Kelly Phillips Erb, Forbes, 14 Sep. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1948, in the meaning defined above