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

Word History

First Known Use

1948, in the meaning defined above