The Seattle Seahawks will go up for sale after Super Bowl LX, league and ownership sources familiar with the arrangement tell 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 the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers have been owned by Allen's estate since the former owner and Microsoft co-founder died in 2018 after a yearslong battle with cancer. His sister, Jody Allen, has controlled the teams as the executor of the trust, with a directive from her late brother to eventually sell both and donate the proceeds to charity.
A spokesperson for the NFL declined comment. The Seahawks also declined comment, referring to Allen's past statement that the team would eventually be sold.
The Seahawks are now beyond a date whereby a sale would've triggered sharing 10% of the proceeds with the state of Washington.
If the Seahawks are put up for sale, it would be the first time in the Super Bowl era that the entirety of a team that played in the championship game gets put on the market shortly after the game. In February 1991, Preston Robert Tisch purchased 50 percent of the champion New York Giants.
The Seahawks face the New England Patriots on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, Calif.
Paul Allen agreed to buy the Seahawks from Ken Behring in 1996, saving the team from a potential relocation to southern California. If sold, 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 out of the past 10 years. They play at legendary Lumen Field, which players have said is one of the toughest stadiums to play, and which is receiving nearly $20 million in upgrades ahead of the 2026 World Cup. The franchise also has one of the league'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-most valuable team in the league, 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 last June.
One team executive told ESPN that the Seahawks could fetch $7 billion to $8 billion.
The 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 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 last 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 said.
Allen released a statement on the ownership situation in July 2022, saying that while 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 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 lense. It's very clear what type of team she wants and she's been incredibly supportive ... She's been awesome."
