FootBiz newsletter #141: Major Chelsea exit, Barca withdraw from Super League

Selling high is always the dream, whether it’s finding the right moment to put your house on the market or finding a buyer for your talented Uruguayan midfielder.

For the Seattle Seahawks, crowned as Super Bowl champions on Sunday night, that sale process begins now.

From 1997 until his death in 2018, the Seahawks were owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. On his passing, his sister, Jody, took control of the family trust but warned that it could take many years to unwind a portfolio of assets worth between $20-25bn.

A significant portion of the proceeds will be donated to philanthropic causes, including proceeds from the sale of artwork and yachts that have already seen $1bn go to charity. A drawn-out sale of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers for $4bn has been ongoing since it was announced last year, but is expected to be completed some time in 2026 to the owner of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes.

While Jody Allen was never seemingly desperate to offload the Seahawks, the opportunity to do so while the team is on an incredibly sporting upswing is simply too good to turn down. A similar sort of transaction took place around a year ago when the Boston Celtics were put on the market fresh from winning the NBA championship.

That $6.1bn deal (which could rise above $7bn when full control is assumed) was the biggest-ever for an NBA franchise, and the world champion (ahem) Seahawks are expected to smash the record for an NFL team, set by Josh Harris’ consortium that bought the Washington Commanders in 2024.

Analysts expect Seattle to fetch somewhere between $9-11bn.

What has been less discussed is the NFL’s role in this.

While the league is an enormous, sprawling media, licensing and entertainment business with far-reaching tentacles, it is also essentially just a vessel controlled by the 32 owners of the teams. They tend to get what they want, and in this case they want the valuations of their teams to continue to skyrocket.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Seattle were being fined $5m for breaching ownership rules, which is to say that they hadn’t moved quickly enough (by the NFL’s standards) in executing the wishes of Paul Allen that the team be sold.

For what it’s worth, the NFL have repeatedly denied the fine and NBC’s Pro Football Talk reported it had been delayed or pushed off entirely in exchange for the Allen Trust agreeing to conduct the sale process now.

Those owners will now see the champion franchise sold for a record valuation, boasting a top, young head coach and one of the best executives in football, John Schneider, as GM. It truly is perfect timing. That rising tide of valuations will lift all boats, and when the next team goes on the market there will be even fewer people who can afford to own 1/32nd of the world’s highest revenue sports league ($20bn in 2025, the Premier League is at around $8n for comparison).

Jeff Bezos, who had been based in Seattle for many years until recently is one obvious name who has been mentioned but Amazon are a major league partner and broadcaster. While his wealth (estimated net worth: $250bn) would no doubt be welcomed, there would be logistical hurdles to overcome.

With the league now allowing private equity investors to take stakes, a consortium of smaller billionaires (a weird term) could also club together to form a group capable of buying out the Allens, or at least a portion of the team.

The closest parallel in football might have been AC Milan selling to RedBird for $1.2n in 2022 straight after winning a first Scudetto in years, the second-biggest price for a football club ever. Or Tottenham being ‘for sale’ last summer after their Europa League win. Of course, ENIC have since stridently denied that the team is on the market and the Lewis family appear to have renewed interest in the team, but the Firehawk group that were reportedly suitors for the club last summer are now in negotiations with Daniel Levy for his ~25% stake, per Bloomberg.

If you can’t be good, be lucky. It appears that the Seahawks and the NFL might be both, and everyone involved is about to make a lot of money off the back of it.

Table of Contents

• Last man standing at the zombie Super League

• Laporta prepares for Barca elections

• Ronaldo’s strike may be over

• Chelsea double down on Bompastor

• Liverpool tribunal fee set for Rio 

• Parkinson has Wrexham “job for life”

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