Vinod Khosla's bid to buy the Seattle Seahawks has been accepted and he’s expected to officially take control of the team relatively quickly.
One way or another, this is going to have some impact on the Seattle Sounders and Seattle Reign.
Back in February, we put this together but we figured it was worth updating. Here’s what we know right now:
The Allen Estate already owns 25% of the Sounders
When Adrian Hanauer originally agreed to bring the Sounders from the USL into MLS, he made a deal with Seahawks owner Paul Allen: In exchange for the Seahawks running the Sounders' entire business operation for five years and giving them a team-friendly lease on Lumen Field, Allen would get a 25% stake in the Sounders.
At the time, it seemed like a master stroke. For the rough equivalent of $7.5 million, the Sounders offloaded one of their biggest startup expenses, tapped into the Seahawks' vast expertise and secured assurances that their stadium would look and feel like a proper soccer pitch (even if it was FieldTurf).
During those consequential five seasons, the Sounders became arguably the most successful expansion story in professional North American sports history, set virtually every MLS attendance record and built a foundation as strong as any in North American soccer history.
How well that agreement aged depends on perspective. With the Sounders now valued at around $900 million, Allen's investment is effectively worth about $225 million. Meanwhile, the Seahawks' involvement in the Sounders is essentially no different from the standard tenant-landlord agreement, with the occasional social-media post thrown in.
Allen Estate has to sell Sounders’ stake
Notably, the Seahawks’ stake in the Sounders is not technically part of this deal, as those are two distinct assets in the Allen Estate portfolio. But the directive that led Jody Allen to sell the Portland Trail Blazers and now the Seahawks is the same one that will eventually force her to sell the Sounders stake, so it’s not at all hard to imagine the two assets becoming intertwined in the near future.
