A pair of recently hired partners at Latham & Watkins are helping to guide the upcoming sale of the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, the pro football team confirmed on Wednesday.
Latham partners Matt Eisler, Russell Hedman, and Michael Anastasio are representing the estate of Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who died in 2018. The estate is seeking to sell the team after it won Super Bowl LX over the New England Patriots this month.
Latham hired Eisler and Hedman in January from Hogan Lovells, the transatlantic firm known for its sports practice. Hogan Lovells and Eisler had been advising the Allen estate on the sale of the National Basketball Association’s Portland Trail Blazers, which is yet to close.
The new assignment shows why sports partners like Eisler with deep industry relationships have recently been hired by some of the largest, most profitable firms.
Kirkland & Ellis last year hired a Latham partner and a Proskauer Rose partner to bolster its sports group. Weil Gotshal & Manges also added a Hogan Lovells partners to formally launch a sports practice, while Davis Polk & Wardwell brought on a Proskauer sports partner.
The value of sports franchises has skyrocketed in recent years, and the amount of transactional work has ballooned as private equity firms increasingly take stakes in the teams. The NFL last year became the latest major sports league to allow private equity investment.
The Seahawks sale will test whether an increase in valuations applied to some of those private equity stake sales lines up with franchise control transactions. The most recent ownership change was the 2023 sale of the Washington Commanders, which sold for an NFL record of more than $6 billion to a group including Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris and retired basketball star Magic Johnson.
Eisler advised the Commanders on the structure of that deal and its compliance with league rules while he was at Hogan Lovells. Davis Polk also advised the Harris group.
The Sports Business Journal earlier reported Latham’s involvement in the Seahawks deal.
(Adds Eisler's work on Commanders sale in the penultimate paragraph.)
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