From “soft” to…suddenly scintillating?
That’s where the market for the sale of the Super Bowl-champion Seahawks has gone in mere weeks.
“The market I’ve been told has been robust,” NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said Wednesday on ESPN. “And the way it is trending, I would not be surprised at all if there’s a special meeting among NFL owners this coming August.”
That presumably would be to approve the bid and the sale from the Paul G. Allen Trust to the new ownership group.
“Could have a new Seahawks owner before the season,” Rapoport told ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show.
The 2026 NFL season begins Wednesday, Sept. 9, with the Seahawks hosting the New England Patriots at Lumen Field. It’s a rematch of Super Bowl 60 in February.
Spokespersons for the Seahawks and the Paul G. Allen Trust have declined all month to comment on the team’s sale, saying there was “no news to share.”
As for the price…
“If all goes perfectly well, could — could — eclipse $10 billion,” Rapoport said.
That would be the richest sale of franchise in North American sports history. In October 2025, the National Basketball Association approved the sale of the Los Angeles Lakers by the Buss family for $10 billion to a group led by Guggenheim Partners chief executive Mark Walter.
The news of the Seahawks’ suddenly hot sale prospects comes less than three weeks after ESPN’s Seth Wickersham reported the market for the Seahawks’ sale was “soft.”
“Things have really picked up since then,” Rapoport said. Rapoport did not mention any potential Seahawks buyers in his comments Wednesday.
Known potential buyers
All it apparently took to heat up this Seahawks sale was multiple, competing bids.
Three names of potential buyers emerged in the first week of May.
Sportico said Aditya Mittal and Wyc Grousbeck, co-owners of the NBA’s Boston Celtics, were preparing a bid to buy the Seahawks. Sportico said Mittal, a steel magnate in India who lives in London, and Grousbeck were the only signatures on a letter of interest they submitted to Allen & Company. That’s the investment group the Paul G. Allen Trust has hired to handle the finances of the team’s sale.
Sportico also reported later that day, May 7, that billionaire Vinod Khosla was preparing a bid buy the Seahawks. Khosla is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a large venture-capital investor in the Silicon Valley. Forbes estimates his worth to be about $14.5 billion. He recently purchased a minority stake in the Seahawks’ rival San Francisco 49ers.
Khosla also submitted a letter of intent to buy the Super Bowl champions as part of the process, sources told Sportico.