Vinod Khosla buys the Seahawks for $9.6 billion, then admits he still roots for the Steelers
Vinod Khosla just bought the Seattle Seahawks for a record $9.6 billion, and during his very first press conference as an owner, he casually dropped a bomb that became a PR nightmare. He said he came to the US in 1976, right when Pittsburgh was dominating the NFL, and that’s what hooked him on football. He even signed off sarcastically, thanking reporters for the extra pageviews.
Now Khosla is firing back at the media, accusing them of blowing up a “molehill” for clicks. Here’s exactly what he said, what the backlash looked like, and what he’s saying now to defend himself. “I was originally and still am a big Steelers fan,” he told reporters, adding, “little-known fact, but I still watch all the Steelers games, too. He hit back on X, calling the coverage a media strategy to fill “column inches” and “video minutes,” and insisted his old fandom changes nothing about how he’ll run the team. “I still watch their games doesn’t mean I won’t unconditionally ALWAYS as owner, want [the Seahawks] to win,” he wrote, adding he wants Seattle to have “every edge up, EVERY TIME over every other team.
He admitted that he’s been a lifelong Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and he still watches every one of their games. Reporters and fans reacted immediately, they all roasted him, saying that this might be the worst possible thing to say on day one. Khosla explained his Steelers loyalty goes back decades. Khosla isn’t shying away from it.
His wife Neeru Khosla is set to be the franchise’s controlling owner, with son Neal and daughter Nina also part of the family group fronting the purchase.
There’s a wrinkle worth noting too: Khosla previously held a small stake in the San Francisco 49ers, which NFL rules now require him to sell as part of taking over Seattle.
A billionaire buying his first NFL team gets exactly one shot at a first impression, and he chose to spend it reminiscing about a rival franchise that broke Seattle’s heart in 2006. The real issue is that he didn’t need to say any of it. That’s not media manufacturing outrage, that’s just bad instincts for the room. Calling reporters out for covering your own unprompted quote doesn’t fix that either; it just makes day one stretch into day three.