Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – NFL owners on Wednesday unanimously approved the record sale of the reigning Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks to an ownership group led by India-born billionaire Vinod Khosla, the team announced. The estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen last month entered into a formal sale agreement with a group led by the Khosla family, notably 71-year-old Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla.
With the vote, the Khosla family are cleared to become the wildly popular American football league’s latest controlling owners. They must relinquish their previously held minority stake in the rival San Francisco 49ers, after which the transaction will officially be complete. “We are honored to be entrusted as the next stewards of the Seattle Seahawks,” Khosla said in a statement. “We look forward to building on the winning legacy Paul Allen created and to earning the trust of the Seahawks organization and fans everywhere.”
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Terms of the transaction have not been officially disclosed, but the sale price is widely reported at $9.612 billion, which would be a record purchase amount for an NFL club. The most recent NFL sale was for the Washington Commanders in 2023 for $6.05 billion. The estate of Allen, who died in 2018, had directed trust executor Jody Allen, Paul’s sister, to donate all proceeds from the sale of the Seahawks to charity.
“How often do you get to buy a franchise that just won the Super Bowl? So, we are incredibly lucky and humbled by this gift, I would say, from the Allen Trust,” said Khosla. Khosla, who has lived in the same San Francisco Bay Area home since 1986, added: “We’re huge fans of football, and these opportunities, especially Super Bowl-winning teams, seldom come along, so we were very excited to have the opportunity. And I’ve been tied to the Seattle tech community for a long time, so it was pretty easy to make the jump.”
© 2024 AFP
