The Portland Trail Blazers are for sale.
The estate of former owner Paul Allen announced Tuesday that it has begun a process to sell the franchise that is expected to bleed into the 2025-26 season. It has hired investment bank Allen & Co. to lead the sale and it will work with law firm Hogan Lovells for it.
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The team sits in a trust Allen left behind when he died in 2018. Jody Allen, his sister, has run the Blazers for the last seven years.
There has been ample speculation since Allen died about when the Blazers would be sold and when the process would begin. Allen’s trust has slowly sold off its other holdings in the years since his death, including his considerable art collection.
The NBA’s board of governors would need to sign off on and certify any sale.
Allen’s estate said the proceeds of the sale would go to his posthumous philanthropic effort. The trust also owns the Seattle Seahawks and a 25 percent stake in the Seattle Sounders, but those teams are not currently for sale.
Nike founder Phil Knight made a public attempt to buy the franchise in 2022 when he partnered with Dodgers co-owner Alan Smolinisky to make an offer worth more than $2 billion for the team. The Blazers declined to sell to them at that time.
The price for NBA teams has skyrocketed even in those intervening three years. The Suns sold at a $4 billion valuation the next year, then a record for an NBA team. This spring, the Wyc Grousbeck agreed to sell the Celtics to a group led by Bill Chisholm at an initial $6.1 billion valuation; that sale has not been finalized and approved yet. If it is, it would be the highest price ever paid for a controlling stake in a professional sports franchise in North America.
(Photo: Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)
