The Seahawks’ Super Bowl win likely marks the beginning of an eventful sports year for the Emerald City.
On Sunday, the franchise won its second championship in a 29–13 blowout win over the Patriots.
It also put the franchise on the clock. Seahawks owner Jody Allen has been legally obligated to sell the team and donate the proceeds to charity since her brother, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, died in 2018. Several reports suggest that she is finally going to do so. Jody Allen has controlled Paul’s sports portfolio—which includes the Seahawks, Trail Blazers, and 25% of MLS’s Seattle Sounders—since his death.
She started the process of divesting the teams by selling the Blazers to billionaire Tom Dundon. The first part of a multistep transaction to sell the team to the Hurricanes owner is set for March at a $4 billion valuation.
A source previously told Front Office Sports that the Seahawks won’t be put up for sale until the first part of the NBA deal closes in March. A spokesperson for the Allen estate told ESPN a week ago that the “team is not for sale,” and added that “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.”
The city won’t just be adding a new NFL owner, though. It very well could be adding another major pro sports franchise.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has suggested for years that Seattle could get an NBA team again after the SuperSonics left for Oklahoma City in 2008. Silver has flip-flopped about domestic expansion over the years, as the appetite for it among NBA owners has fluctuated; he said in December that the league will definitively announce its expansion plans this year.
Silver then added that he’s aware of the mixed signals he’s sent to both Las Vegas and Seattle—the long-rumored top expansion candidates—which seemed to suggest he’s more likely to add two teams than keep the league at its current 30.
“I want to be sensitive there about this notion that we’re somehow teasing these markets, because I know we’ve been talking about it for a while,” Silver said.
Kraken owner Samantha Holloway has kept an eye on NBA expansion and is planning to lead an expansion bid for an ownership group to bring the Sonics back if the NBA ultimately pulls the trigger.
The Kraken are in their fifth season and are currently third in the NHL’s Pacific Division standings, which would clinch the organization’s second playoff berth in its young history.
