Report: Seattle Seahawks to go up for sale after Super Bowl
The Seattle Seahawks will be put up for sale following their Super Bowl 60 matchup with the New England Patriots, according to a report Friday by ESPN.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - JANUARY 25: Former Seattle Seahawks player Kam Chancellor hands the George Halas Trophy to Jody Allen of the Seattle Seattle Seahawks after Seattle defeated the Los Angeles Rams 31-27 in the NFC Championship game at Lumen Field on January 25, 2026 in Seattle, Washington. The Seahawks won 31-27. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
(Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
The Seattle Seahawks will be put up for sale following their Super Bowl 60 matchup with the New England Patriots on Feb. 8, according to a report Friday by ESPN’s Seth Wickersham and Brady Henderson.
The report cites “league and ownership sources familiar with the arrangement” that informed ESPN.
The Seahawks currently operate under chair Jody Allen, who took control as the trustee of the Paul G. Allen Trust following the 2018 death of her brother Paul Allen, who bought the team in 1997.
An eventual sale of the Seahawks has been expected since the death of Paul Allen, who made a directive for the trust to sell both the Seahawks and the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and have the proceeds donated to charity.
A statement by a Paul G. Allen Estate spokesperson pushed back on ESPN’s report Friday, however.
“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation, and the team is not for sale,” reads the statement, per NFL insider Ian Rapoport. “We’ve already said that will change at some point per Paul’s wishes, but I have no news to share. Our focus right now is winning the Super Bowl and completing the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers in the coming months.”
Per ESPN’s report, the Seahawks declined comment and referred to “Allen’s past statement that the team would eventually be sold.”
The Trail Blazers, which were bought by Paul Allen in 1988, were put up for sale last May, with an agreement to sell reached in September with a group of investors led by Tom Dundon, who owns the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes.
Sports business reporter John Canzano reported in 2022 that an insider at Vulcan Inc., a private company founded by the Allen siblings, said Jody Allen may have interest in retaining a stake in the Seahawks’ ownership and may be saving the sale of the team for last in hopes of that.
The ESPN report Friday said that a date has passed that now allows the Seahawks to sell without triggering a clause where 10% of the sale’s proceeds would have been shared with the state of Washington.
Seattle Sports’ Brock Huard, a former Seahawks player, shared his insight in 2022 about a potential sale of the NFL team. His estimation at the time was that the team would not be sold until 2025 or 2026 due to a contract that carried a stipulation relating to Lumen Field, the Seahawks’ $430 million home stadium that opened in 2002 and was built with $300 million of public funding.
“There was basically a poison pill enacted into the deal that said you can’t go and turn around and sell the (team) … until – and I’m pretty confident that it’s 2025, 2026,” Huard said at the time. “… (With) that poison pill, (the Seahawks) would have had to donate hundreds of millions of dollars back… and that just was not going to happen.”
Jody Allen released a statement in 2022 regarding the state of both the Seahawks and Trail Blazers ownership:
“As chair of both the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks, my long-term focus is building championship teams that our communities are proud of. Like my brother Paul, I trust and expect our leaders and coaches to build winning teams that deliver results on and off the court and field.
As we’ve stated before, neither of the teams is for sale and there are no sales discussions happening.
A time will come when that changes 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 Seahawks rose to their highest levels of success under Paul Allen’s ownership, reaching the Super Bowl for the first time in the 2005 season, winning their first NFL championship in the 2013 season and reaching a second straight Super Bowl the following year.
And now under Jody Allen as chair, the Seahawks have returned to the Super Bowl after an 11-year absence, having won 14 games for the first time ever in the regular season to earn the No. 1 seed from the NFC in the playoffs. The Seahawks beat the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams in the postseason to punch their ticket to the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., just two years after letting legendary head coach Pete Carroll go and hiring Mike Macdonald in his place.
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Comments
7 Comments
when are you gonna take this post down?> Who is asleep at the switch there? fake news
Can you say Sonics? What city has been wanting an NFL team? Also interesting that the proceeds of the sale are to go to charity . . . after Ferguson gets his 10%. It is technically a sale of stock in the team, so capital gains tax gets applied. Don’t you just love Democrats?
This is the lamest grab for attention. Lets do some timeline math here. The trust states that the team will be eventually sold. There is currently no sale in progress and the Superbowl is next Sunday. So yes the team will be sold after the Superbowl. The headline may as well have said the team to be sold after the sunrise tomorrow morning and it would have been just as accurate. I'm guessing the editorial interns are the only ones in the office at NW News right now.