Brian Windhorst
The field of the owner of the late Portland Trail Blazers, Paul Allen, officially put the team for sale with the product going to philanthropic efforts, the team announced on Tuesday.
Allen died of cancer in 2018 and his will asked that the franchise be sold “at some point,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver, several times in the past seven years. Allen’s sister Jody Allen acted as the team governor as the testamentary executor of the Paul Allen Trust during this period.
As part of the announcement, the trust said the NFL Seattle Seahawks, whose domain also has, would not be part of the sale. The 25% participation is also not in the Spenders of Seattle of the MLS.
The trust has made the decision to sell the Blazers following several key developments in the past year. The NBA has agreed new 11 -year -old media rights agreements with ESPN, NBC and Amazon for 77 billion dollars combined. In 2024, the Blazers sold their original arena, the Moda Center, in the city of Portland for $ 1 and the land under the arena for $ 7 million. He then launched a public / private partnership to renovate the arena and the surroundings which included a new lease until 2030.
Earlier this year, the Boston Celtics sold for a record of $ 6.1 billion, increasing all the values of the team. Sporto recently estimated the Blazers at $ 3.6 billion. Allen bought the Blazers in 1988 for $ 70 million.
One of the possible bidders is the founder of the billionaire Nike and from Portland, Phil Knight, who would have approached the team in 2022 with an offer to buy the franchise. Knight, 87, joined the owner of Los Angeles Dodgers, the owner of the minority Alan Smolinisky on this offer at the time.
The announcement of the sale the day after the NBA lottery, where the Blazers had 18% chance of obtaining a choice among the 4 top 4, but ended up returning from the slit n ° 10 to the choice n ° 11, could have played a role in the timing.
In the movements focused on basketball, the franchise extended the contracts of the Chauncey Billups coach and the director general Joe Cronin after the season. The Blazers went 36-46 this season, their best record in four years, but have not made the playoffs since 2021. They started a large-scale reconstruction during the negotiation of the star of the franchise Damian Lillard in 2023.
The Trust said the sales process would continue in the NBA 2025-26 season. He hired Allen & Co. and the law firm Hogan Lovells to carry out the process.
