Cook vs. Zuckerberg for the Seahawks (refuted)

Apple’s outgoing CEO, Tim Cook, is among four interested bidders considering a deal to buy leading NFL team and reigning Super Bowl Champions, the Seattle Seahawks, writes Front Office Sports.

These claims have since been denied by The Puck’s Dylan Byers, citing sources close to both men. So the rest of this story becomes a might have been, alas…

A ten billion dollar bidding war

The Seahawks are up for sale and are expected to reach between $8-10 billion, which would smash current team sales records. The team was put up for sale Feb 18 in respect of the wishes of late Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, who owned the team. 

Cook isn’t the only Big Tech Mogul up to purchase the winning football team. Tim finds himself up against Meta’s Zuckerberg, with two other serious investors also in the frame. 

Does Cook have enough cash? 

His personal wealth is estimated at c$2.9b, while Zuckerberg’s amassed $206 billion. It is unlikely that Cook will have too big a problem raising the rest of the capital, or in putting together an investment group to acquire the team.

Why would he want it?

I suspect the entire Apple top brass are big sports fans, based I admit only on happening to be around at a particular moment when Apple’s Eddy Cue was ushering Phil Schiller out the door to watch a match during a WWDC years ago.

I imagine that were Cook to purchase the team we’d also see some very interesting applications of Apple technologies in future matches, but we shall have to see who wins the bidding war. 

He’ll need some nice ways to fill his time once he does step down, and the connection between Apple and the Superbowl is already quite legendary – reporting around the Apple Music halftime deal noted that the Super Bowl halftime shows drew 120m viewers. 

again, these claims have been denied, though it remains of interest they emerged in the first place. This suggests someone in tech may be planning an attempt at a deal, but leaves it very open to question as to who they might be. We may never know.

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