On July 11, the Estate of Paul G. Allen announced an agreement to sell the Seattle Seahawks to the Khosla family. The ownership group is led by Vinod Khosla, who is also a limited partner with the San Francisco 49ers.
According to ESPN’s Seth Wickersham and Adam Schefter, who cited multiple league sources familiar with the negotiations, the franchise was sold for $9.612 billion, setting a new record for the highest sale price of an NFL team.
As a result, the Seahawks are entering a new era once the 2026 NFL season gets underway. On July 25, head coach Mike Macdonald shared his honest thoughts on the ownership sale that happened this month.
“We haven’t had much interaction yet, and everything is about the same as it’s been,” Macdonald told reporters (h/t Pro Football Talk). “Nothing’s changed on our front, nor will it for the foreseeable future. So that’s how we’re approaching everything. We had great visits with all the folks that were here. The best way to describe my mentality is that I’m excited to get going.
“We’re thankful for Jody [Allen] and the things that her and the rest of the ownership group did, especially since I’ve been here, it’s been fantastic and hopefully the rest of the 12s feel the same way as they should. Now we’re entering a new chapter in our organization’s history. That’s a cause for excitement as well.”
Mike Macdonald Interacting With New Seahawks Ownership
Khosla has a background in the NFL with his connection to the Niners, so Seattle isn’t getting an owner who has no idea how a team operates. Macdonald also revealed to already having conversations with the ownership.
“You can always talk on the phone and do Zooms, but being in person is a different experience, which I definitely appreciated,“ Macdonald added.
New Seattle Ownership Could Make Tweak to Front Office
With the Seahawks coming off a Super Bowl title, many likely want the Khosla family to leave everything as is and let the front office continue doing what they are doing to win championships.
Nonetheless, they are the owners and have the final say, which is why the Khosla family could be implementing tweaks to the front office, as Wickersham stated during his July 13 appearance on “The Rich Eisen Show.”
“You never know how these things go, but I think it’s an ideal situation in the sense that he’s coming in, he’s buying a team that obviously is very well-run at the moment,“ Wickersham said. “And his son Neal [Khosla], I think, is going to be heavily involved in day-to-day operations with the team, and his son interned with the 49ers back in the day.
“Everybody always says, they always say, what makes a good owner? It’s easier to say what makes a bad owner. And I think that ownership being involved not in the minutiae of football, but in how football operations work, I think can be a really good thing. And that will be an interesting case study to see over the coming years how it works in Seattle.”
Mike Macdonald Gives True Thoughts on Seahawks’ Ownership Change