Sources: Seahawks will go up for sale after Super Bowl LX

The Seattle Seahawks will go up for sale after Super Bowl LX, league and ownership sources familiar with the arrangement told ESPN, ending years of questions about when the team would seek new ownership following the 2018 death of former owner Paul G. Allen.

Sale discussions have taken place at ownership and league levels for at least the past week, the sources said.

The Seahawks and NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers have been owned by Allen’s estate since the former owner and Microsoft co-founder died in 2018 from complications of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. His sister, Jody Allen, has controlled the teams as the executor of the trust, with a directive from her brother to eventually sell both and donate the proceeds to charity.

A spokesperson for the NFL declined to comment. In a statement, a spokesperson for the Paul G. Allen estate said the organization doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation and that “the team is not for sale.”

“We’ve already said that will change at some point per Paul’s wishes, but I have no news to share,” the spokesperson’s statement said. “Our focus right now is winning the Super Bowl and completing the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers in the coming months.”

The Seahawks are now beyond a date whereby a sale would have triggered sharing 10% of the proceeds with the state of Washington.

If the Seahawks are put up for sale, it will be the first time in the Super Bowl era that an entire team that played in the championship game gets put on the market shortly afterward. In February 1991, Preston Robert Tisch purchased 50% of the champion New York Giants.

The Seahawks face the New England Patriots on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, California.

Paul Allen agreed to buy the Seahawks from Ken Behring in 1996, with the deal becoming official in 1997. The deal saved the team from a potential relocation to Southern California. If sold again, the franchise could set a record for an NFL team sale price coming off a Super Bowl appearance and possibly a championship.

The Seahawks have made the playoffs in seven of the past 10 years. They are based at legendary Lumen Field, which opposing players have said is one of the toughest stadiums to play at and which is receiving nearly $20 million in upgrades ahead of the 2026 World Cup. The franchise also has one of the NFL’s best-regarded general manager-head coach combinations in John Schneider and Mike Macdonald.

Sports teams valuations have been soaring in recent years. Sportico values the Seahawks at $6.59 billion, the 14th highest in the NFL, according to its ranking. The most recent NFL team to sell was the Washington Commanders, which a group led by Josh Harris purchased in 2023 for a record $6.05 billion. The NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers sold a majority stake in the team at a $10 billion valuation in June.

One team executive told ESPN that the Seahawks could fetch $7 billion to $8 billion.

The Trail Blazers are in the process of being sold to a group of investors led by Tom Dundon, who agreed to buy the team for more than $4 billion. Dundon owns the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes.

Jody Allen, who raised the 12 flag before the NFC Championship Game in honor of her brother, typically has not granted interview requests during her time running the team, and her first spoken comments came on stage at Lumen Field on Sunday as the Seahawks were receiving the NFC championship trophy: “I’m incredibly proud to be standing here today and accepting this on behalf of all the 12s here, all the 12s across the country and all the 12s across the globe.”

She released a statement on the ownership situation in July 2022, saying that although neither the Blazers nor the Seahawks were for sale at the time, they eventually would be. That was after Nike founder Phil Knight and Los Angeles Dodgers minority owner Alan Smolinisky made an unsolicited offer to buy the Trail Blazers for more than $2 billion.

In her 2022 statement, Allen said the teams would eventually be sold “given Paul’s plans to dedicate the vast majority of his wealth to philanthropy, but estates of this size and complexity can take 10 to 20 years to wind down. There is no pre-ordained timeline by which the teams must be sold.

“Until then, my focus — and that of our teams — is on winning.”

The most significant decision Allen has made since assuming control of the team was to move on from legendary coach Pete Carroll after the 2023 season, which elevated Schneider into the role of the team’s top decision-maker. Schneider hired Macdonald, who has led the Seahawks to 10- and 14-win regular seasons and now the fourth Super Bowl appearance in franchise history.

“The thing that sticks out to me about Jody was her enthusiasm about where she wanted our team to be and our franchise to be as a vision of the Seattle Seahawks,” Macdonald said Friday during team media availability. “That was during our interview process. Honestly, that’s really where I was like, ‘OK, this is something I feel really strongly about that I feel like I could help create that.’ So everything, I think, has been through that lens. It’s very clear what type of team she wants, and she’s been incredibly supportive. … She’s been awesome.”