Seahawks sale could draw a Seattle billionaire. What about Jeff Bezos?

With the Seahawks up for sale, the Seattle area has no shortage of people with deep pockets to step in.

The Seahawks organization, owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen until his death in 2018, is run by Allen’s sister Jody Allen. On Wednesday, the Seahawks announced the estate had commenced a formal sale process, “consistent with Allen’s directive to eventually sell his sports holdings and direct all Estate proceeds to philanthropy.”

Rumors have swirled online for years about who might purchase the Seahawks. One name that keeps surfacing wasn’t Seattle-raised like Allen was, but he does have deep connections to the city.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has popped up repeatedly when it comes to NFL ownership, especially when the Washington Commanders were for sale in late 2022 into 2023.

At the time, Bezos himself didn’t publicly comment on whether he would bid for the team. But in February 2023, The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, reported that Bezos had hired an investment firm to explore a bid for the Commanders. Two months later, reports surfaced that Bezos wouldn’t bid on the team; The Athletic said Bezos was denied the chance to bid on the organization.

A year later, the Financial Times reported on the Bezos-related controversies at The Post and said Bezos was “simply outbid” by the eventual Commanders owner Josh Harris, who purchased the team for $6.05 billion.

Bezos swooping in to buy the Seahawks may just be wishful or pessimistic thinking, depending on the opinion one holds of one of the richest people on Earth. The only link between him and the Seahawks is a 2019 report from The Post in which an anonymous source told the newspaper Bezos had expressed an interest in buying the team.

Bezos also announced in 2023 that he was leaving the Seattle area for Miami.

As billionaires gobble up sports teams in the U.S. and across the world, Bezos is among those who aren’t playing at sports ownership. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is in that camp as well.

But other members of Seattle’s tech elites have either dabbled or thrown themselves fully into a sports franchise.

After years of reports that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was leading the charge to bring a professional men’s basketball team back to Seattle, he purchased the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014 in the wake of the Donald Sterling scandal. In 2024, he and his wife were asked by “60 Minutes” about potentially buying the Seahawks when the team became available. His wife replied that “he and his next wife would have a good time with that,” to which Ballmer added “we’ve got enough sports.”

Microsoft’s current CEO Satya Nadella is an investor in Major League Cricket, a fledgling league that includes the Seattle Orcas, of which Nadella is a co-owner.

John Stanton, who founded the telecommunications company VoiceStream that was eventually acquired by T-Mobile’s parent company, was a minority owner of the Mariners when Nintendo of America sold the majority of its stake in 2016.

Stanton became chair and CEO under the ownership group, First Avenue Entertainment. Microsoft President Brad Smith and his wife, Kathy Surace-Smith, a senior vice president at NanoString Technologies, joined the ownership group in 2024. Panos Panay, a former Microsoft executive vice president and current Amazon senior vice president, joined the group in 2025 with his wife, Mary Panay.

Former Microsoft executives Dawn Trudeau and Lisa Brummel became co-owners of the Storm in 2008, which has an ownership group that has grown to include WNBA and Storm legend Sue Bird and former Seahawk Bobby Wagner.

Seattle-area businessman and early Amazon investor Adrian Hanauer brought Paul Allen and comedian Drew Carey on as Sounders investors and launched it as an MLS expansion team. Former Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky joined the ownership group in 2023.

Click here to read article