The Seattle Seahawks are one step closer to having new ownership.
Over a month after an agreement was reached with the Khosla family to purchase the Super Bowl champions for a league record $9.612 billion, franchise owners voted to approve the sale. A three-quarters majority (or 24 out of 32 possible votes) was needed for ratification and they received a unanimous vote.
While Sun Microsystems
co-founder Vinod Khosla is the face of the ownership group, his wife Neeru would serve as the controlling owner. Neal Khosla, Vinod and Neeru’s son, is expected to have a “significant leadership role in the ownership group,” per an official NFL memo.
Front Office Sports reported last week that, “The sale is expected to officially close sometime in September,” so not every hurdle has been cleared, but there’s no reason to think that there will be some twist to the contrary.
In a matter of days, the Seahawks’ 30-year span of ownership of Paul Allen and later the Paul G. Allen trust (led by Paul’s sister Jody) will come to an end. If not for Paul, Seattle would probably not have an NFL team right now, much less a two-time Super Bowl champion. It was Paul’s directive to sell his assets and donate the proceedings to philanthropic causes, so the sale was bound to happen.
In the eight years since Paul’s passing, Jody has navigated through some (comparatively speaking) rougher seasons without playoff wins to end the era of Allen ownership on the highest of high notes.
More is expected to be revealed soon, and Field Gulls will have updates either within this article or a new one.
