8/26/2026
(Atlanta, Ga) The sale of the Seattle Seahawks that was announced last month cleared its likely final hurdle today when all 32 owners approved the sale from the Paul Allen foundation to Vinod Khosla. Khosla co-founded Sun Systems and had many tech investments. His worth was listed at nearly 14 billion dollars.
When Paul Allen died control of the Seahawks and his Portland Trailblazers went to his foundation which is headed by his sister Jody Allen. Paul Allen is the one who stepped in to save the Seahawks from moving when he bought the team from Ken Behring who tried to move the team to Anaheim.
Sports Teams are Profitable
Allen bought the team from Behring for 194-million dollars in 1997, and the foundation sold it to Khosla’s group for 9.612-billion dollars. 194 million in 1997 is worth approximately 403 million in today’s dollar value. This makes the current sale a 9.2-billion-dollar profit.
Allen’s foundations also owned the Portland Trailblazers. Paul Allen bought the franchise in 1988 for 70-million dollars. Jody Allen sold it last October for 4.2 billion dollars.
Adding all this up, Paul Allen invested 264-million dollars to buy the Seahawks and Trailblazers and have sold both over the last 10 months for a total of 13.8-Billion dollars.
70 million in 1988 is worth 190 million in today’s dollars so Allen’s current day value investments for both teams was 593 million, in which they earned a 13.2-billion-dollar profit.
Money goes to Philanthropy
Jody Allen will continue to lead the Allen foundations with this money going toward those efforts. The Allen Family Philanthropies was formed in 1988 and have many projects and core focus areas of interest including the Arts and Culture with an emphasis on the Pacific Northwest, Youth Programs, Environment and conservation along with science including high impact funding for large scale projects.
New Owners
Vinod Khosla and his investment group stepped up with the winning bid. His wife Neeru and son Neil are part of the ownership group. It remains unclear how the new owners plan to manage the team but coming off a Super Bowl win it doesn’t seem like they are looking to change what is already in place.
For more on this story check out the following links;
ESPN’s Brady Henderson’s story on this link
Yahoo Sports’ Kyler Fox’s report on this link
West42sports.com