At Super Bowl Seahawks vice chair answer questions on team’s sale. Local buyers?

The sale of the Seahawks — the issue the team would rather not have the week of their first Super Bowl appearance in more than decade — isn’t going away.

So when is it happening?

“We put out our statement. So I can’t say anything beyond that,” Seahawks vice chair Bert Kolde said Monday, after he and his wife sat in the front row representing the NFC champions at commissioner Roger Goodell’s annual state-of-the-NFL press conference at the Super Bowl.

The statement Kolde referred to Monday at the San Jose Convention Center was the Paul G. Allen Estate’s assertion Friday “the team is not for sale” — with “is” doing a ton of lifting there. The estate’s statement also reiterated the estate that owns the Seahawks dictates the team must be sold. Most of the proceeds will go to Allen’s many philanthropic interests before his death in 2018. The Paul G. Allen Estate issued that statement through a spokesman Friday. That was soon after ESPN and The Wall Street Journal reported the Seahawks would be sold soon after this season ended with Seattle’s Super Bowl.

Moments before Kolde spoke Monday, Goodell said in his press conference a report this past weekend by The Wall Street Journal that the league fined the Seahawks $5 million for continuing to violate NFL rules by having an estate and not an individual person or group of people own a club is not true.

This much we know: The Seahawks’ sale is going to happen. It’s not a matter of if, not when.

And signs are pointing to the when being in the months following the Super Bowl.

Kolde said he, chair Jody Allen, other leaders from Vulcan, LLC, the company Paul Allen formed to manage the Seahawks have studied the recent sales of North American sports franchises. That includes the NBA’s Boston Celtics (for $6 billion), the Los Angeles Lakers (a record $10 billion) and the most recent sale of an NFL team. That was the Washington Commanders, for $6.05 billion in 2023.

“We study all teams, all the sales. That’s something we keep abreast of,” the Seahawks’ vice chair said.

The Allen Estate put the Portland Trail Blazers up on sale in September. Kolde said Monday he expects that sale to be final this spring. It’s about to go to a group led by the owner of the National Hockey League’s Carolina Hurricanes for a reported $4.25 billion.

“Still tracking to close in a couple months,” Kolde said.

With the Blazers sale closing, it makes sense (and billions of dollars) that the Seahawks are next.

The Seahawks are most likely going to set an NFL record for a franchise sale, perhaps in excess of $8 billion.

Seahawks sale to local buyers?

The News Tribune asked Kolde off the stage following Goodell’s 45-minute press conference Monday if the Seahawks already have local buyers on the horizon to sell to.

“Nothing to add,” Kolde said to that.

Is there is anything in the estate’s instructions for the sale of the Seahawks that assures the franchise remains in Seattle? A stipulation it must be sold to local owners? A contract from whoever buys the team that binds them to keep the Seahawks in the city?

To that, Kolde referenced the team’s 30-year lease with Lumen Field runs through 2031. He did not comment on the 20-year option the team has with the stadium and the local government district that runs it beyond 2031.

“l’m not going to get into all of that, all of that detail,” Kolde said.

“But the Allen family put a lot into saving the Seahawks, keeping them in Seattle (by Paul Allen buying the team in 1997 from Ken Behring, who tried to move the team to Southern California). We campaigned around the state (for the new stadium that opened in 2002 and replaced the Kingdome). The voters agreed with us. And we put together Lumen Field.

“And we delivered on everything we promised in that campaign. The team. The stadium. Soccer balls were on our posters. The Sounders launched as the most successful MLS team. The World Cup is coming; we talked about World Cup back in that campaign.

“So we’ve been all about sports in the community for decades. So the lease has six years or so...”

League owners want the Seahawks to sell sooner than later, so they can learn the latest relative valuations of their teams in this post-COVID world with the league’s new media rights deals that provides $11 billion in annual revenue to the NFL. The league signed that a couple years ago.

Asked if the NFL was pressuring the team to sell soon, Kolde said: “No comment on that.”

Kolde said Jody Allen will be at Super Bowl 60 Sunday against the New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in nearby Santa Clara.