The decision is part of Paul Allen’s directive to sell his sports holdings, but the Seahawks won’t be sold just yet.
Seven years removed from the passing of Paul Allen, his estate has formally put one of his sports teams up for sale.
On Tuesday, the National Basketball Association’s Portland Trail Blazers announced that a formal sales process has commenced, “consistent with Allen’s directive to eventually sell his sports holdings and direct all estate proceeds to philanthropy.”
This process is “estimated to continue into the 2025-26 basketball season,” which perhaps not coincidentally marks the start of a new humongous NBA broadcast rights deal with NBC, ABC/ESPN, and Prime Video.
The most relevant part of the statement as it pertains to the Seattle Seahawks, also owned by Allen’s estate: “This news does not affect the Seattle Seahawks NFL franchise or the estate’s 25% interest in the Seattle Sounders MLS, and neither is for sale.”
Front Office Sports says the Blazers are currently estimated to be worth $3.5 billion.
Jody Allen serves as her late brother’s executor and trustee of his estate. She has been the chair of both the Blazers and Seahawks during that span.
Paul Allen assumed the Blazers’ ownership role in 1988 at a cost of $70 million, quickly overseeing two NBA Finals appearances over the ensuing four years. The Blazers were briefly up for sale back in 2006 during a low point in the franchise’s history, but Paul Allen pulled them off the market.
These current Blazers have missed the playoffs in four consecutive seasons for the first time since a five-year stretch of postseason absences from 2003-2008, and haven’t won a postseason series since their magical 2019 Western Conference Finals run. At 117-211 (.357) since 2021-22, the only worse four-year stretch in Blazers history was during their early expansion days in the 1970s. They are no longer on ROOT Sports, so it hasn’t been all that bad.
There has been some speculation as to whether or not the Blazers could eventually be relocated from Portland, which just landed a WNBA expansion team for 2026, but the city just renewed its lease agreement with Moda Center until 2030. There’s not much reason to believe that the Blazers could experience the same fate as the Seattle SuperSonics (or… in a twist, become the new SuperSonics), but it’s hard to really make a definitive statement until the sale is complete.
As for the Seahawks, the agreement between the team and the state of Washington to give the state of a 10 percent cut of the gross sale price expired last May, so that won’t factor into any eventual Seahawks sale. The Blazers were always expected to be sold before the Seahawks, so we’ll see if any timeline for the Seahawks will begin after the Blazers sale is finalized.