Vinod Khosla speaks onstage during the "Super Reliability vs. Super Intelligence" panel at the HumanX Conference San Franciso 2026 Moscone Center South on April 8, 2026, in San Francisco. (Big Event Media/Tribune News Service)
Vinod Khosla speaks onstage during the "Super Reliability vs. Super Intelligence" panel at the HumanX Conference San Franciso 2026 Moscone Center South on April 8, 2026, in San Francisco. (Big Event Media/Tribune News Service)
The last time the NFL signed off on the transfer of ownership of the Seattle Seahawks, it happened with little fanfare.
The vote to approve the sale of Seahawks from Ken Behring to Paul Allen — officially recorded as occurring on Aug. 19, 1997 — was conducted by mail-in ballot.
Once there were enough yes votes — 23 of the 30 owners at the time — the league simply made an announcement saying it considered Allen the owner of the Seahawks.
The Allen family’s tenure as owner of the Seahawks — in the eyes of the NFL, anyway — is set to come to an end Wednesday.
There won’t be a ton of fanfare this time, either, but there will be an in-person meeting.
The league’s 32 owners (or a representative) will convene in a special league meeting at an Atlanta hotel to approve the transfer of ownership of the team to a group led by the Khosla family.
The meeting is expected to begin around 11:30 a.m. Seattle time and conclude around 3 p.m.
The vote is expected to be a slam dunk — or maybe a Shawn Kemp tomahawk jam if you prefer a Seattle sports analogy.
The league’s powerful finance and ownership policy committee voted unanimously last Wednesday to recommend to the full ownership body that it approve the sale.
There’s nothing to indicate the owners won’t rubber stamp their approval Wednesday, as they did when the Denver Broncos changed hands in 2022 and the Washington Commanders in 2023.
The Khosla family — husband and wife Vinod and Neeru and son Neal — lead a group that has agreed to pay $9.612 billion for the team, shattering the previous NFL record for the most paid for a team when the Commanders yielded $6.05 billion three years ago.
The NFL vote doesn’t mean the sale is complete.
That will happen over the next week or so as the Allen estate and the Khosla family sign all the necessary final documents to make the sale official.
Both sides wanted NFL approval before taking the final steps of a process that officially began on Feb. 18 when the Seahawks announced that the Allen Estate was placing the team for sale.
After the vote, there figures to be some sort of public statements from the NFL (likely Commissioner Roger Goodell) and a member of the Khosla family.
There’s not likely to be a full-scale news conference in which the family answers questions fans may consider the most pressing such as what they think of Lumen Field and its future and might they ever consider installing grass.
That doesn’t figure to come until all papers are signed, sealed and delivered and the sale is official.
The hope of the team and the league is that the sale is completed before the Seahawks kick off the 2026 regular season at Lumen Field on Sept. 9 against the New England Patriots.
Statements of any kind in Atlanta will be the first since July 11 when the agreement between the Allen Estate and the Khosla family was announced.
At that time, Vinod Khosla released a statement on behalf of the family saying: “We are honored to be entrusted as the next stewards of the Seattle Seahawks. We look forward to building on the winning legacy Paul Allen created and to earning the trust of the Seahawks organization and fans everywhere.”
The family has not said anything since (other than Vinod Khosla tweeting a comment to a question about grass at Lumen Field), nor have they been allowed to be in the building at the VMAC or have conducted any official business regarding the Seahawks.
The word “stewards” in Khosla’s statement was surely not chosen by accident and defines the job that awaits the family and the other partners of the group whose names could be revealed over the next week or so.
The Allen family lived up to the full meaning of that word after Paul Allen completed his purchase of the team from Behring.
Behring’s turbulent almost nine-year reign of error over the Seahawks included the team’s descent from the first division title in 1988 to the worst record in franchise history at 2-14 just four years later in 1992.
Then followed the failed attempts to renovate either the Kingdome or Husky Stadium, which led to Behring’s attempt to move the team to southern California in 1996. When the NFL told him he couldn’t, local officials encouraged Allen to buy the team.
Allen accepted, on condition of the passing of a public referendum to fund Lumen Field.
From the moment Allen took over the team in 1997 there was never much question about his commitment to winning.
Less than two years later he signed off on hiring Mike Holmgren to an eight-year, $32 million contract as coach and general manager.
The $4 million a year average was double what Holmgren was due to make in the final year of his Green Bay contract, and a sizable jump from what had been the most paid to a coach — the $2.5 million Carolina had ponied up earlier that year for George Seifert.
Eleven years later, following consecutive losing seasons, Allen approved the aggressive move to fire Jim Mora after one season and give Pete Carroll a five-year, $35 million deal to leave USC, an average just below the $8 million that was believed to be the most any coach was making at that time.
The NFL’s hard salary cap means how much an owner is or isn’t willing to spend isn’t as big of a deal as it is in MLB or the NBA.
While the Seahawks didn’t keep every player through the years — the cap assures no team can — when the team really wanted, Paul Allen or his sister Jody, who took over as team chair upon Paul’s death in Oct. 2018, usually said yes.
Jody Allen, in her first significant move as team chair, signed off in April 2019 on a contract to Russell Wilson guaranteeing him $107 million, then an NFL record.
Those decisions and responsibilities will fall on the shoulders of the Khosla family after Wednesday.
The family’s history — Vinod Khosla acquiring a reported almost $14 billion in wealth over the last five decades since arriving in the United States as an immigrant from India with what has been said to be no money and no connections — shows he knows what makes a successful business.
The family’s Bay Area ties and 49ers fandom led them to acquire a 3.1% stake in one of the Seahawks’ bitterest rivals in the spring of 2025.
That interest led them to want to acquire a team of their own, and they leapt when the Seahawks became available. The Seahawks were not only a team coming off a Super Bowl title and with a fervent fanbase, but it’s unclear when another NFL team will become available for purchase (the Seahawks will be just the third team to change hands since 2018).
Further explanations on they wanted to buy the Seahawks is a question that soon can be asked and answered.
First, the formality of an NFL vote.