May 7, 2026 • 10 mins
Eben Novy-Williams of Sportico joins Softy and Dick Fain to discuss the new group of candidates being reported to purchase the Seahawks, the backgrounds of the latest people interested in a purchase and how the group members are connected, the group of Aditya Mittal and Wyc Grousbeck being better possible stewards, and sale’s timing.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now back to Softie and Dick on your home for
the Huskies, Krakin and the twelfth Man Sports Radio ninety
three point three KJR FM. Hi, thanks to Bob. What's
it for joining us? Last segment you missed it? Check
out the podcast ninety three three KJR dot com Saftian
Dick page.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good stuff from Bob.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
We'll share some thoughts on that coming up at the
five o'clock hour. Brett Boone joining us courtesy Avenue Kings
dot com talking Mammon News at five o'clock tonight. But
this morning we were awoken rather early, by the way,
I might add, by ibn Nobi Williams, who writes for Sportico,
who reported on not one, but two potential new ownership
groups for the Seahawks, one that includes Aditya Mattal, who
(00:43):
is a Indian steel tycoon along with Witt Grosbuck, who
is a minority owner of the Boston Celtics, at another
that includes Vanadkolsla, who is the co founder of SOUN
Microsystems and a minority.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Owner of the forty nine ers.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And I texted Iban, I said, look, man, we got
to get you on the air and talk about this.
Evan joins us right now on the radio program. Evan,
how are you man, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I'm doing well, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Let's talk about who these guys are, because most of
us have never heard of these people until this morning.
Grossbucks name obviously in the NBA a little bit. But
when you reported on these names, all of us ran
right to the Internet to figure out who they were.
So give us a little bit of recon a little
bit of intelling who these guys are.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes, I'll start with the first one with grosspec His
family has been the control owner of the Celtics for
almost fifteen years or so until it was sold last year,
and he has been He was the hands on the
operations owner and obviously had a lot of success in
his time with the Boston Celtics. As part of the
(01:50):
transition of the Grosspecks selling out, a group led by
a man a Bulchism came in and Aditya Mattal gave
a lot of the financing to build Chisholm. So Aditya
and Wick got to know each other, I'm sure quite well.
In the process of the Seahawks sale last year. Wick's
family is now basically out of the Celtics entirely or
(02:11):
will be pretty soon. He's got a lot of money
in his pocket. I'm sure he's looking around at other
sports opportunities. And the Mattal family one of the richest
families in India steel tycoons, as you said, branching out
into sports. In addition to the Celtics, the family just
bought one of the Premier League Indian cricket teams last
year or last week, the Rogerston Royals. So, like a
(02:33):
lot of folks when we can talk about you know,
Cosla also, sports is an asset class. It's an asset
class that's that diversifies your your businesses outside of steel
in this case, and the NFL is the biggest entertainment
business in America. So it's not surprising to hear that
these guys are interested.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
One thing that was interesting to me about Costla is
you know, why did he wait so long to invest
in a pro sports franchise. It was basically he turned
seventy last year and decided out by minority.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Interest in the sports franchise for the first time.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And yeah, it's interesting to see a lot of folks,
particularly folks like Pino Cosla, who have been in kind
of Silicon Valley VC world for a very long time.
I don't think a lot of those folks are inherent
sports fans. I think you maybe come into it later
in life. And I think there was a lot of
skepticism originally, believe it or not, about whether sports team
valuations were above and we've seen over the past twenty
(03:26):
years that sports team valuations continue to go kind of
up into the right on the charts, and none more so,
as I said, than the NFL. So I do think
that there's a class of very rich people in COSLA's
networth is fourteen billion dollars. He's one of the richest
people in California. I think there's a whole lot of
folks who are now kind of opening their eyes or
have been recently to this idea that, in addition to
(03:47):
being fun to own sports teams can actually be pretty
dark art investments as well.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
No question, Well, Eben Novy william Is on us from
Sportico on the radio show, and Evan these are two
of the groups that we've now been introduced to because
of you.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But I'm certain that there's going to be more. Right.
I mean, this won't stop at.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
These two groups, do you have any idea, any thought,
any inkling on what names are coming next.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I'm trying to get my hands on more of those
names i can so I can report them. I would
be shock, I think to your point, yes, I would
be shocked if these are the only two groups that
are bidding. I think one of the interesting things here
is just how much money you need to buy an
NFL team. Now, let's say the Seahawks sell for let's
just say nine billion dollars, which is probably roughly around
what I would expect. The NFL demands that the control
(04:36):
owner around thirty percent, So that's basically it's almost three
billion dollars in cash that you need to have. It's
to put down own to own the Seahawks. And there's
not many people, even if you're worth a lot of money,
that have three billion dollars in cash, let alone, really
want to put it into an asset like this where
it stays and stays untouched for a while. So we
(04:58):
talk about all the time every new NFL team that
comes up for sale, it feels like we're looking at
a smaller and smaller pool of people who can afford
to buy it. But there's others out there. There's certainly
some names. The Padres were for sale recently and that
deal just got done. But there are some very rich
people on the West Coast that been for the Padres
that I wouldn't be shocked to hear their names pop
(05:19):
up with the Seahawks. That there's obviously some very rich,
some very very rich tech people on the West Coast
with ties to Seattle. Certainly thinking about Steve Balmer and
Jeff Bezos. I haven't heard anything directly about them, but
it would be surprising to see that these two would
the only two. In fact, I almost guarantee that there's others.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Evan, let me ask you too, because you're a reporter.
You stick to the facts with Sportico black and white.
But I want you to do me a favor. Your
put your calmness hat on for a second, right, put
your editorial hat on for a minute, because I'm assuming
that one day, back in the day, you're a little
kid growing up as a sports fan like we were.
What you know about these two people, these two groups
(06:00):
hoops led by him a tall grossbuck and then Colesla
which one of the two if it were one of
the two do you think would represent Seattle and be
a better steward of the Seahawks.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So I don't know as much about Veno Cosla. What
I will say is that Wick Grossbec has a proven
track record of operating a major sports team in a
huge city with a lot of success. And it's not
crazy to say that during his time owning the Celtics
that they were one of the two, alongside the Warriors,
maybe most successful franchises in the league over that time.
(06:34):
And I do think that matters because we've seen this
in sports all the time, that owners can come in
and think they know X or y or want to
take the reins and then four into the business. So
in terms of having an owner that has operational experience, yeah,
Wick has that. I think a lot of Seahawks fans
and if I was a Seahawks fan, i'd want someone
that has local ties. I don't get the sense that
(06:55):
either of these groups right now do. But the way
these things come together is that they they add in
as they get more serious, they add in more people.
And I would be shocked to hear if either of
these groups weren't adding in some local either local celebrities
or local people networth behind network individuals. Then that add
a local Seattle option here and the other thing that
(07:17):
I've been thinking about a lot, because when we tweeted this,
you see a lot of Seahawks fans kind of immediately
asking if they're going to spend and how rich they are.
And the NFL obviously has a hard salary cap. There's
there's a very narrow band of spending within the NFL.
It's not like if this was a baseball team, Yeah,
you'd be very curious about how much these owners were
(07:37):
going to spend. It looks a little different in the NFL.
So in some ways, the net worth and the spending
capacity of owners in the NFL is a little different.
And I think what you're looking for is who's going
to be a good operational steward of the franchise?
Speaker 4 (07:51):
No doubt, Habin, What would you say the Hawks fans
that immediately tried to put two and two together on
social media saying, well, Adiita Mattal is from London, so
he'll try to move the Hawks to London.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, I think that is very unlikely. In fact, I
will promise that won't happen. I mean, one thing that
the Allen Jody Allen and and Paul Allen's trust can do.
They can put in terms when a team gets thought
that the team's not gonna move. Uh, that's not going
to be a concern for the for the Seahawks. There's
there's plenty of other NFL teams that would be way
earlier to be relocated to London if that ever were
(08:22):
to happen. But I also don't think I think the
NFL is happy with what it's doing in London right now.
I think the logistics of putting a single franchise in
Europe is so incredibly daunting that I don't think it's
in the cards anytime soon. But yeah, I can. I
can guarantee you that that no one is looking to
buy the Seahawks in the hopes of relocating this team
out of Seattle anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Well, I didn't even thought of that option, So I'm
glad you're shooting it down before I can even think
of it. Evan Novy Williams again Sportico with us. He
reported this morning on two new potential ownership groups.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So what's next here? Is this going to start moving rapidly?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
You know?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Are we going to have a new owner by September.
What do you think the next maybe three or four
months look like.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Man, I think originally I would have expected the plan
here was to have a new owner in place by
the start of the season. As we get dragged out
a little bit, I think that's maybe a little bit
less and less likely. My understanding of worthing stand right
now is that there are groups and we've mentioned two
of them here, who have submitted letters of intent to bid,
and they've already got a sense of that. They've looked
(09:25):
into what's called the data room, which is a sense
of how the finances of each of the team operates,
but they have not we haven't seen formal bids yet.
I think the bankers that are running this dealer are
still trying to figure out who's real and who isn't.
So this isn't going to wrap up any time in
the next few weeks. But I do think that that
folks like us and some other reporters are probably going
(09:45):
to get their hand on a few other names, and
then once the bids come in, that will be kind
of a new round of making phone calls to see
who's actually in and who isn't. And then sometimes sometimes
they choose to do best and final offer, just kind
of one round, get as high as you can, and
we'll make a decision. Other times they'll look to pick
groups against each other and do three or four rounds
and get the bidding together to drive up the price.
(10:08):
I don't know which one they're going to do here,
but I would imagine the goal was to get to
a leadership team in place ownership team in place by
the start of the season. But if they blew through
that deadline, that would not be shocked at all.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Eban nov Williams, Sportico, Great stuff, Man, appreciate this, and
we'll keep an eye on your stuff for more breaking news. Man,
thanks for doing this. Thank us, all right, Evan nov
Williams of Sportico talking about the two new potential ownership
groups in Seattle. Wow, all right, we're gonna get the
textimonials next. Brett Boone will join at five. We're gonna
(10:40):
kind of dive into what we've learned today about all
of this NBA, the NFL. It's moving fast, boys right
here On ninety three three KJRFM,
Now back to Softie and Dick on your home for
the Huskies, Krakin and the twelfth Man Sports Radio ninety
three point three KJR FM. Hi, thanks to Bob. What's
it for joining us? Last segment you missed it? Check
out the podcast ninety three three KJR dot com Saftian
Dick page.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good stuff from Bob.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
We'll share some thoughts on that coming up at the
five o'clock hour. Brett Boone joining us courtesy Avenue Kings
dot com talking Mammon News at five o'clock tonight. But
this morning we were awoken rather early, by the way,
I might add, by ibn Nobi Williams, who writes for Sportico,
who reported on not one, but two potential new ownership
groups for the Seahawks, one that includes Aditya Mattal, who
(00:43):
is a Indian steel tycoon along with Witt Grosbuck, who
is a minority owner of the Boston Celtics, at another
that includes Vanadkolsla, who is the co founder of SOUN
Microsystems and a minority.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Owner of the forty nine ers.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And I texted Iban, I said, look, man, we got
to get you on the air and talk about this.
Evan joins us right now on the radio program. Evan,
how are you man, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I'm doing well, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Let's talk about who these guys are, because most of
us have never heard of these people until this morning.
Grossbucks name obviously in the NBA a little bit. But
when you reported on these names, all of us ran
right to the Internet to figure out who they were.
So give us a little bit of recon a little
bit of intelling who these guys are.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes, I'll start with the first one with grosspec His
family has been the control owner of the Celtics for
almost fifteen years or so until it was sold last year,
and he has been He was the hands on the
operations owner and obviously had a lot of success in
his time with the Boston Celtics. As part of the
(01:50):
transition of the Grosspecks selling out, a group led by
a man a Bulchism came in and Aditya Mattal gave
a lot of the financing to build Chisholm. So Aditya
and Wick got to know each other, I'm sure quite well.
In the process of the Seahawks sale last year. Wick's
family is now basically out of the Celtics entirely or
(02:11):
will be pretty soon. He's got a lot of money
in his pocket. I'm sure he's looking around at other
sports opportunities. And the Mattal family one of the richest
families in India steel tycoons, as you said, branching out
into sports. In addition to the Celtics, the family just
bought one of the Premier League Indian cricket teams last
year or last week, the Rogerston Royals. So, like a
(02:33):
lot of folks when we can talk about you know,
Cosla also, sports is an asset class. It's an asset
class that's that diversifies your your businesses outside of steel
in this case, and the NFL is the biggest entertainment
business in America. So it's not surprising to hear that
these guys are interested.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
One thing that was interesting to me about Costla is
you know, why did he wait so long to invest
in a pro sports franchise. It was basically he turned
seventy last year and decided out by minority.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Interest in the sports franchise for the first time.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And yeah, it's interesting to see a lot of folks,
particularly folks like Pino Cosla, who have been in kind
of Silicon Valley VC world for a very long time.
I don't think a lot of those folks are inherent
sports fans. I think you maybe come into it later
in life. And I think there was a lot of
skepticism originally, believe it or not, about whether sports team
valuations were above and we've seen over the past twenty
(03:26):
years that sports team valuations continue to go kind of
up into the right on the charts, and none more so,
as I said, than the NFL. So I do think
that there's a class of very rich people in COSLA's
networth is fourteen billion dollars. He's one of the richest
people in California. I think there's a whole lot of
folks who are now kind of opening their eyes or
have been recently to this idea that, in addition to
(03:47):
being fun to own sports teams can actually be pretty
dark art investments as well.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
No question, Well, Eben Novy william Is on us from
Sportico on the radio show, and Evan these are two
of the groups that we've now been introduced to because
of you.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But I'm certain that there's going to be more. Right.
I mean, this won't stop at.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
These two groups, do you have any idea, any thought,
any inkling on what names are coming next.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I'm trying to get my hands on more of those
names i can so I can report them. I would
be shock, I think to your point, yes, I would
be shocked if these are the only two groups that
are bidding. I think one of the interesting things here
is just how much money you need to buy an
NFL team. Now, let's say the Seahawks sell for let's
just say nine billion dollars, which is probably roughly around
what I would expect. The NFL demands that the control
(04:36):
owner around thirty percent, So that's basically it's almost three
billion dollars in cash that you need to have. It's
to put down own to own the Seahawks. And there's
not many people, even if you're worth a lot of money,
that have three billion dollars in cash, let alone, really
want to put it into an asset like this where
it stays and stays untouched for a while. So we
(04:58):
talk about all the time every new NFL team that
comes up for sale, it feels like we're looking at
a smaller and smaller pool of people who can afford
to buy it. But there's others out there. There's certainly
some names. The Padres were for sale recently and that
deal just got done. But there are some very rich
people on the West Coast that been for the Padres
that I wouldn't be shocked to hear their names pop
(05:19):
up with the Seahawks. That there's obviously some very rich,
some very very rich tech people on the West Coast
with ties to Seattle. Certainly thinking about Steve Balmer and
Jeff Bezos. I haven't heard anything directly about them, but
it would be surprising to see that these two would
the only two. In fact, I almost guarantee that there's others.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Evan, let me ask you too, because you're a reporter.
You stick to the facts with Sportico black and white.
But I want you to do me a favor. Your
put your calmness hat on for a second, right, put
your editorial hat on for a minute, because I'm assuming
that one day, back in the day, you're a little
kid growing up as a sports fan like we were.
What you know about these two people, these two groups
(06:00):
hoops led by him a tall grossbuck and then Colesla
which one of the two if it were one of
the two do you think would represent Seattle and be
a better steward of the Seahawks.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So I don't know as much about Veno Cosla. What
I will say is that Wick Grossbec has a proven
track record of operating a major sports team in a
huge city with a lot of success. And it's not
crazy to say that during his time owning the Celtics
that they were one of the two, alongside the Warriors,
maybe most successful franchises in the league over that time.
(06:34):
And I do think that matters because we've seen this
in sports all the time, that owners can come in
and think they know X or y or want to
take the reins and then four into the business. So
in terms of having an owner that has operational experience, yeah,
Wick has that. I think a lot of Seahawks fans
and if I was a Seahawks fan, i'd want someone
that has local ties. I don't get the sense that
(06:55):
either of these groups right now do. But the way
these things come together is that they they add in
as they get more serious, they add in more people.
And I would be shocked to hear if either of
these groups weren't adding in some local either local celebrities
or local people networth behind network individuals. Then that add
a local Seattle option here and the other thing that
(07:17):
I've been thinking about a lot, because when we tweeted this,
you see a lot of Seahawks fans kind of immediately
asking if they're going to spend and how rich they are.
And the NFL obviously has a hard salary cap. There's
there's a very narrow band of spending within the NFL.
It's not like if this was a baseball team, Yeah,
you'd be very curious about how much these owners were
(07:37):
going to spend. It looks a little different in the NFL.
So in some ways, the net worth and the spending
capacity of owners in the NFL is a little different.
And I think what you're looking for is who's going
to be a good operational steward of the franchise?
Speaker 4 (07:51):
No doubt, Habin, What would you say the Hawks fans
that immediately tried to put two and two together on
social media saying, well, Adiita Mattal is from London, so
he'll try to move the Hawks to London.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, I think that is very unlikely. In fact, I
will promise that won't happen. I mean, one thing that
the Allen Jody Allen and and Paul Allen's trust can do.
They can put in terms when a team gets thought
that the team's not gonna move. Uh, that's not going
to be a concern for the for the Seahawks. There's
there's plenty of other NFL teams that would be way
earlier to be relocated to London if that ever were
(08:22):
to happen. But I also don't think I think the
NFL is happy with what it's doing in London right now.
I think the logistics of putting a single franchise in
Europe is so incredibly daunting that I don't think it's
in the cards anytime soon. But yeah, I can. I
can guarantee you that that no one is looking to
buy the Seahawks in the hopes of relocating this team
out of Seattle anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Well, I didn't even thought of that option, So I'm
glad you're shooting it down before I can even think
of it. Evan Novy Williams again Sportico with us. He
reported this morning on two new potential ownership groups.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So what's next here? Is this going to start moving rapidly?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
You know?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Are we going to have a new owner by September.
What do you think the next maybe three or four
months look like.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Man, I think originally I would have expected the plan
here was to have a new owner in place by
the start of the season. As we get dragged out
a little bit, I think that's maybe a little bit
less and less likely. My understanding of worthing stand right
now is that there are groups and we've mentioned two
of them here, who have submitted letters of intent to bid,
and they've already got a sense of that. They've looked
(09:25):
into what's called the data room, which is a sense
of how the finances of each of the team operates,
but they have not we haven't seen formal bids yet.
I think the bankers that are running this dealer are
still trying to figure out who's real and who isn't.
So this isn't going to wrap up any time in
the next few weeks. But I do think that that
folks like us and some other reporters are probably going
(09:45):
to get their hand on a few other names, and
then once the bids come in, that will be kind
of a new round of making phone calls to see
who's actually in and who isn't. And then sometimes sometimes
they choose to do best and final offer, just kind
of one round, get as high as you can, and
we'll make a decision. Other times they'll look to pick
groups against each other and do three or four rounds
and get the bidding together to drive up the price.
(10:08):
I don't know which one they're going to do here,
but I would imagine the goal was to get to
a leadership team in place ownership team in place by
the start of the season. But if they blew through
that deadline, that would not be shocked at all.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Eban nov Williams, Sportico, Great stuff, Man, appreciate this, and
we'll keep an eye on your stuff for more breaking news. Man,
thanks for doing this. Thank us, all right, Evan nov
Williams of Sportico talking about the two new potential ownership
groups in Seattle. Wow, all right, we're gonna get the
textimonials next. Brett Boone will join at five. We're gonna
(10:40):
kind of dive into what we've learned today about all
of this NBA, the NFL. It's moving fast, boys right
here On ninety three three KJRFM,
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