"I feel like I own the Patriots," says a billionaire bidder to buy the Seahawks
For many Seahawks fans, theirworst memory associated with the team will be a play against thew New England Patriots. Conversely, many Patriots fans probablyresent the Seahawks right now after Seattle so thoroughly established how much better they were than New England last seasonwith a dominant victory in the Super Bowl.
So will a Patriots fan who recently said “I feel like I own the Patriots” get his revenge by buying the team that re-wrote “Seahawks-Patriots Super Bowl history” three months ago?
ESPN’s Seth Wickersham reported on Friday thatbids to buy the Seattle Seahawks are “softer” than expected, but still expected to go above $9 billion, which would be an NFL record. One of those parties that could end up with the strongest offer comes from a pair of billionaires who are also associated with ownership of the Boston Celtics:
“Sporticoreported Thursday, and two sources confirmed to ESPN, that Aditya Mittal, a member of one of India's richest families and a limited partner of theBoston Celtics, and Wyc Grousbeck, the Celtics' former controlling owner, are preparing a bid.”
None of the names in Wickersham’s report are the types of “famous billionaires” that we 99.99-percenters would assume are interested and afraid of like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, other than the mention that rumors about Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg are overstated because they “aren’t planning bids”.
So I had to ask myself who these billionaires I have not heard of are and why they want to buy the Seahawks.
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The one who stood out immediately wasWyc Grousbeck, a 64-year-old investor who was the face of a group that bought the Celtics in 2002 for $360 million. His fatherIrving Grousbeck co-founded a cable company in 1963 which they would later sell for $11.5 billion, and I presume that’s where most of the money to buy the Celtics came from, although I’m finding that I’m pretty far out of my element here trying to researchbusiness history.
But were the Celtics an investment (that $360 million purchase in 2002became a $6.1 billion sale in 2025) or a personal passion for a Boston native?
From a 2008 ESPN article,Grousbeck is a lifelong Boston fan who dreamed of owning a sports franchise, although his family and investment group have also been looking around the west coast for decades in multiple sports:
“Wyc Grousbeck grew up in Weston, Mass., a wooded suburb west of Boston. His father, Irving, took his four children to Fenway Park and Boston Garden several times a year, and those experiences created a profound bond with the professional sporting teams.”
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“Wyc landed a job at Highland Capital Partners, a venture firm outside Boston, and specialized in start-up medical technology investments. The market was friendly, and business boomed. Wyc found himself the managing partner of a company managing $1.8 billion in funds.
Years earlier, he and his father had looked into buying the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants.”
In a twist of fate that is only relevant as of today,Wyc credits a trade with the Sonics for Ray Allen as the catalyst for Boston’s first NBA championship in 22 years, not long before the Sonics were purchased and moved to Oklahoma City by Clay Bennett, an owner who doesn’t care about Seattle.
And in Wickersham’s article on Friday, the opportunity to buy an expansion NBA team in Seattle is also part of the reason that bids to buy the Seahawks are less enthusiastic than expected.
So as the Sonics were selling off players prior to relocation, they helped the Celtics win an NBA championship after two decades of irrelevancy, and nowbecause the Sonics were relocated, the NBA’s return to Seattle two decades later could help Grousbeck by the Seahawks for a lower price than expected?
I don’t think I like fate actually.
Nothing written here so far means that Wyc is necessarily a “Patriots fan”, right? You can grow up in a city and hate the local team, it happens all the time. Except that in this 2024 interview with Goldman Sachs (everybody’s favorite podcast!),Wyc Grousbeck says that not only is he a Patriots fan, he “feels” like he owns them:
“We always say we’re fans who bought (the Celtics). I feel like I own the Red Sox and the Patriots too, and the Bruins. I’m season ticket holders for all of those.”
I guess in a world where Tom Brady is allowed to call NFL games for Fox and be part owner of the Raiders, why can’t someone who feels like he owns the Patriots also literally own the Seattle Seahawks?
There’s no conflict of interest for someone who can afford to pay the interest.
As of now, Grousbeck still serves as a lead co-owner and CEO of the Celtics even after the team was sold in 2025. The other person named in Wickersham’s report, Aditya Mittal,invested $1 billion into the 2025 purchase of the Celtics with Bill Chilsholm.
I didn’t find as many interesting notes on Mittal, except maybe this 2014 photoshoot for GQ India and noting that “if you take a gondola up a ski slope in Switzerland, the cable is probably Mittal steel.”
None of this is to say that the Seahawks could not win more Super Bowls with an ownership group led by Grousbeck and Mittal. It’s not like they would move the team out of Seattle (better than selling the team to investors from Oklahoma City or St. Louis, right?) and Grousbeck had a lot of success running the Boston Celtics. People who know them say that the Grousbeck’s are highly competitive when it comes to winning and the Celtics won a lot more under them than the previous regime.
“We never wanted to look back and say, ‘If only we’d done a little bit more,’” Wyc said. “We’ve exceeded our expectations already this year, but we haven’t exceeded our hopes. We’re hoping for the whole thing.”
The Seahawks wouldn’t be owned by a local billionaire, but then how many of those are there? Dreams of the team being owned by anyone who isn’t worth many billions of dollars (just a down payment would require over $3 billion in cash) are just not realistic and many of the names of Seattle rich people who we know about have plenty of critics too.
The team being owned by a Patriots fan doesn’t sound right, and at the same time I’d accept anyone who knows thatthe best thing an owner can do is be invisible and not the face of the franchise. Paul Allen was rarely, if ever, heard from during his tenure. His sister was the same and the Seahawks have won almost as many games as any team in the NFL during the 21st century with the exception of…the Patriots.
The other two names mentioned by Wickersham:
“Steve Apostolopoulos, a Canadian billionaire who was a candidate to buy the Commanders in 2023, is a potential buyer, sources said -- although an owner added that it was hard to tell how "real" Apostolopoulos is as a candidate, given the team's expected price point.”
Apostolopoulos’s family originates from the city of Kalamata, which olive.
But he has failed to in previous bids to buy sports franchises,including the Moons and the Charlotte Hornets. The Seahawks would cost even more than those teams that he could not afford.
“Vinod Khosla, a billionaire limited partner of theSan Francisco 49ers.”
Okay, the Patriots fan is starting to sound a lot better all of a sudden.
Seaside Joe 2621