why is jody allen selling the seahawks
Jody Allen is moving toward selling the Seattle Seahawks mainly because of her late brother Paul Allen’s instructions, the legal structure of his estate, and growing pressure and incentives around NFL ownership rules and franchise values.
The core reasons
- Fulfilling Paul Allen’s will
- When Paul Allen died in 2018, the Seahawks and his other major assets went into a trust managed by Jody Allen.
* His estate plan called for those assets to eventually be sold, with the bulk of the proceeds going to philanthropy and charitable causes, not kept in the family long term.
* Jody has repeatedly framed any future sale as “per Paul’s wishes,” meaning she is carrying out a plan rather than deciding on a whim.
- Trust and NFL ownership rules
- Right now the Seahawks are controlled by the Paul G. Allen Trust, with Jody as trustee and team chair, which is an unusual situation by NFL standards.
* League rules strongly prefer a clear, individual controlling owner, not a long‑running trust, so the NFL has been pushing for the situation to be “normalized” via a sale to a traditional owner.
* Reporting has even suggested the Seahawks were fined over ownership‑structure issues, which the league publicly denied, but it still illustrates the tension around keeping the team in a trust indefinitely.
- Contractual and timing pressures
- The team’s stadium financing deal with the state of Washington, dating back to 1997, included provisions tied to a future sale and deadlines that effectively encouraged waiting until the mid‑2020s to maximize proceeds and minimize payments back to the state.
* With those dates expiring and the Seahawks now riding fresh Super Bowl momentum, insiders expect the formal sale process to begin soon after the current season ends, lining up legal, financial, and football timing all at once.
- Market conditions and record franchise values
- Recent NFL sales, like the Washington Commanders at about 6.5 billion dollars, reset the market and showed how much value an owner can unlock by selling now rather than holding indefinitely.
* Estimates peg a potential Seahawks sale in the 7 to 8 billion dollar range, which would likely set a new NFL record and dramatically increase the funds flowing into Paul Allen’s charitable priorities.
- Pattern from the Trail Blazers sale
- Jody Allen has already agreed to sell the Portland Trail Blazers, another franchise that was part of Paul’s estate, signaling she’s actively executing the broader “sell and give” mandate rather than trying to become a permanent sports mogul.
* That move intensified expectations that the Seahawks are next, since keeping only one team would run against the logic of collapsing the estate and distributing assets to charity.
Is she “eager” to sell?
Publicly, the Allen estate keeps saying the Seahawks are “not for sale” yet and that the focus is on football and finishing the Blazers transaction.
At the same time, multiple national outlets and league insiders report that a sale soon after Super Bowl 60 is expected, suggesting the question is when , not if , the team changes hands.
In other words, Jody Allen is selling the Seahawks not because she’s walking away from the team emotionally, but because she’s executing Paul Allen’s estate plan, responding to NFL and legal pressures around trust ownership, and taking advantage of a peak‑value moment for both the franchise and its future philanthropic impact.
Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.