Sporticast: How Is the Seattle Seahawks Deal Being Financed?
Article excerpt
On the 569th Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams discuss some of the biggest sports business stories of the week, including the sale of the Seattle Seahawks. Tech billionaire Vinod Khosla and his wife Neeru Khosla have reached an agreement to buy the defending Super Bowl champions for $9.61 billion, the highest price …
On the 569th Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams discuss some of the biggest sports business stories of the week, including the sale of the Seattle Seahawks. Tech billionaire Vinod Khosla and his wife Neeru Khosla have reached an agreement to buy the defending Super Bowl champions for $9.61 billion, the highest price ever paid for an NFL team.
The hosts break down the buyers. The Khoslas would be rare NFL owners born outside the U.S., and Neeru Khosla, who will be the team’s control owner, would be perhaps the first woman to assume the top ownership position immediately following an NFL sale. Vinod Khosla’s tech background would also make him a relative outlier in the league’s owner circle, while a number of tech billionaires have bought NBA teams in the past decade or two, it hasn’t really happened in the NFL.
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Next the hosts talk about the deal and its structure. While the $9.61 billion is a record for an NFL team, it’s not a record for a sports team. That remains the $10 billion paid by Mark Walter to consolidate control of the Los Angeles Lakers. The hosts debate whether the NFL could have pushed to get the Seahawks price above that figure, and whether the league would even care to do so.
They close by talking about the other major U.S. sports M&A deals underway right now. The NBA’s expansion franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas have drawn interest from groups in both cities. And while the Seattle process appears to have a clear frontrunner, the Las Vegas process seems to be a bit more wide open. The NBA is also selling a dozen inaugural permanent franchises in its new Europe-based league, with signed contracts expected in at least some cities in the coming weeks.
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