FILE – Portland Trail Blazers general manager Joe Cronin, left, and owner Jody Allen courtside at a Trail Blazers game in Portland, Ore., Feb. 8, 2023. The Blazers announced Tuesday that the Allen estate is selling the team.
Craig Mitchelldyer / AP
The Portland Trail Blazers are officially for sale.
The NBA franchise announced the news in a statement Tuesday morning. The process is likely to continue through the 2025-2026 season, and then the NBA board of governors will have to ratify a final purchase agreement.
The development ends years of speculation about when the basketball team would officially be on the market, and it could open the floodgates for billionaire investors or business titans to open their checkbooks. That may include some Oregon legends.
Paul Allen purchased the Blazers for $70 million in 1988. He died in 2018, and the franchise has been operated by the family’s estate since then. His sister, Jody Allen, served as trustee of the Allen family estate.
In the statement, the franchise noted that it had begun a formal sales process for the Blazers, “consistent with Allen’s directive to eventually sell his sports holdings.”
Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft alongside Bill Gates, had instructed his estate to sell off his considerable assets after his death and funnel the proceeds to philanthropic causes.
The Seattle Seahawks, the NFL franchise Allen bought in 1997, are not for sale at this time. Allen also owned a 25% stake in the Seattle Sounders, the Major League Soccer club.
The price tag needed to buy one of the 30 NBA franchises available has soared in recent years. The Boston Celtics, one of the most storied franchises in the association, sold for more than $6 billion this March. In 2022, the Phoenix Suns sold for $4 billion, a record at the time.
That year, ESPN and The New York Times reported that Nike founder Phil Knight had offered to buy the Blazers for more than $2 billion. Knight was teaming up with Alan Smolinisky, one of the partial owners of Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, to buy the Blazers. But Jody Allen reportedly declined the offer.
The Blazers sale comes at another inflection point for the association. The NBA’s latest media deal, an 11-year agreement that is valued at nearly $76 billion for the league and includes a return to NBC broadcast rights alongside ESPN and Amazon, begins this fall. Expansion is also expected to be a dominant discussion this summer. Seattle and Las Vegas have long been rumored to be in the running for expansion franchises. According to Forbes, the Trail Blazers are one of the least valuable franchises in the NBA, but they are still valued at $3.5 billion.
Tuesday’s announcement comes the day after the annual NBA draft lottery, in which the Blazers landed the 11th spot in the June NBA draft.
Portland City Council and the Blazers approved an agreement last August that extended the franchise’s lease agreement at the Moda Center through 2030. That deal also transferred ownership of the Moda Center to the city from Rip City Management, the organization that oversees events at the inner city arena.
As part of that deal, the Blazers and the city agreed to split maintenance costs over the five-year extension of the lease as a way to jumpstart renovations at the arena, which opened in 1995.
In a statement, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson described the Blazers as “central to Portland’s identity, inspiring a legacy of passion, spirit and resilience.”
“The economic and cultural significance of the Trail Blazers cannot be overstated,” Wilson added, noting the 1.5 million visitors to the Moda Center each year and the hundreds of millions of dollars in economy activity generated. He also said the team supports thousands of jobs.
“My office is eager to build a strong partnership with the new ownership, ensuring that Oregon’s favorite basketball team continues to thrive right here in Portland,” Wilson said.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Portland Democrat, also issued a statement on social media. “I’m glad for all of us rooting in Rip City that Trail Blazers ownership is moving forward to make sure our team has a certain future,” Wyden wrote. “And by certain, I mean the Blazers staying right where they belong – in Portland.
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