Vulcan spokesman reiterates Seahawks likely to be sold by Allen estate within 10-20 years

As we’ve already known, the trust that owns and runs the Seahawks mandates the team will be sold. That is per the wishes of late team owner Paul Allen.

Those speaking for Allen’s estate continue to say a possible timeline of that sale is at least 10 years out.

In a story posted online Sunday, Vulcan LLC vice president for communications Jason Hunke told The Wall Street Journal what NFL sources emphasized to The News Tribune in May 2022: The Seahawks and NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, owned by the Paul G. Allen Trust and run by chair Jody Allen, are not for sale.

But, again, they will be. Eventually.

“As Jody said publicly last year (in July 2022, in a letter with the Seahawks logo), the sports teams are not for sale,” Vulcan’s Hunke told The Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Bachman in the story that leads with the Blazers. “That will eventually change pursuant to Paul’s wishes, but there is no preordained timeline for when that will happen. Interested parties can engage when we establish a sales process at some point in the future.”

Vulcan LLC is Allen’s holding company that runs the business operations for the Seahawks and Blazers through the Paul G. Allen Trust. Jody Allen is chair of that trust. Thus, she is the chair of the Seahawks and Blazers.

The Paul G. Allen Trust is going through the extraordinary breadth of investments, holdings and philanthropic interests Allen had prior to his death in 2018. Those are from environmental and social causes to computer science to air-launching satellites into space and his collection of rare music artifacts. The Seahawks and Blazers are in line with all those worldwide interests and holdings.

“A time will come when that changes given Paul’s plans to dedicate the vast majority of his wealth to philanthropy, but estates of this size and complexity can take 10 to 20 years to wind down. There is no pre-ordained timeline by which the teams must be sold,” Jody Allen wrote last July, using the same words Hunke used with the WSJ. “Until then, my focus — and that of our teams — is on winning.”

Hunke repeated to the WSJ Sunday Jody Allen’s words last summer about a timeline to a sale of the Seahawks and Blazers. Hunke told the WSJ 10 to 20 years is “a fair and accurate time frame” to fully resolve Paul Allen’s estate and sell the two sports franchises from it.

In its story, the WSJ quote estate attorneys saying 10 to 20 years would be an unusually long time for an estate to get around to selling assets such as the Seahawks and Blazers.

Then again, few estates have the fortune and varied investments than Allen’s.

His trust reportedly is seeking to give away up to $10 billion. It had assets valued at more than $900 million at the start of 2019. Allen had an estimated net worth of $20 billion at the time of his death.

The WSJ estimates Allen’s Seahawks and Blazers teams are worth $6.6 billion combined.

Jody Allen’s statement last summer came a month after news broke that Nike founder Phil Knight and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Alan Smolinisky delivered to the Blazers a written offer of $2 billion to buy Portland’s NBA team from the Allen Trust. That led to speculation the Seahawks would be next to receive a multi-billion offer.

Yet the Seahawks’ sale remains a longer-term proposition — past when the coach Allen hired, Pete Carroll, is done coaching football.

In November 2020 Jody Allen re-signed Carroll to keep leading Seattle’s football operations through 2025. If he stays as Allen wants him to, Carroll will become the oldest coach in NFL history, past his 74th birthday. Carroll’s contract is believed to be worth more than $12 million annually, one of the richest deals for an NFL coach.

Allen also re-signed general manager John Schneider to stay in charge with Carroll, as they’ve been since her brother hired Carroll from USC in January 2010. Schneider is signed with Seattle through the 2027 draft.