NFL Owners Will Vote on Seahawks Sale in Late August. Here’s What We Know.

The Seattle Seahawks are coming off a Super Bowl win and look like a juggernaut heading into the regular season. But off the field, a massive transaction is brewing. NFL owners are set to vote on the sale of the franchise at a special meeting on August 26 in Atlanta, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

The league notified teams of the one-day meeting, which will also include updates on football and business matters for the upcoming season. The sale is expected to get a vote pending the Finance Committee’s review.

A group led by 49ers partner Vinod Khosla recently agreed to buy the Seahawks for $9.6 billion. That’s a record price for an NFL team. But it’s actually less than the $10 billion figure some insiders had floated as a possibility. Still, $9.6 billion is a staggering number for any sports franchise.

For the sale to go through, at least 24 of the 32 NFL owners have to sign off. That’s a high bar, but given the reported terms and Khosla’s background as a tech billionaire, it’s expected to pass.

What happens to the Seahawks after the sale?

Seahawks fans don’t need to panic. The team isn’t going anywhere. New ownership groups usually keep teams in their current markets, at least initially. But there’s always chatter about stadiums.

Lumen Field is reportedly in excellent shape. It’s one of the louder and more modern venues in the league. So any talk about a new stadium in Seattle — or outside of it — seems premature. But new owners sometimes have their own ideas about what a stadium should look like, so it’s worth keeping an eye on.

That said, the most immediate impact is financial. The sale will set a new benchmark for NFL franchise values and give other owners a fresh data point for what their teams are worth. The league is a money-printing machine, and this deal only confirms it.

Training camp starts soon, and the Seahawks will be focused on football. But behind the scenes, the sale process is ticking along. August 26 is the date circled on the calendar. If the vote goes through, the Khosla group takes over and a new era begins for one of the NFL’s most stable franchises.

We’ll see if any owners try to block it. But barring something unexpected, the Seahawks will have new bosses by the start of the season.