The NBA Board of Governors approved the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers to a group led by Tom Dundon on Monday. The purchase price was not disclosed, though comparable recent transactions—the Phoenix Suns at $4 billion in 2022, the Dallas Mavericks minority stake valuing the team at $3.5 billion in 2023—suggest a number north of $3 billion. Dundon, who owns the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes and holds a minority stake in Topgolf, now controls two major North American sports franchises in different conferences and different time zones.
The Trail Blazers have been in play since late 2023, when the estate of Paul Allen began exploring options. Allen's sister, Jody Allen, oversaw the process through Vulcan Sports & Entertainment. The franchise posted $344 million in revenue for the 2022-23 season, according to Forbes, and carries a local television deal with ROOT Sports that expires in 2025. The team finished 21-61 last season, third-worst in the Western Conference, and holds the No. 7 pick in the upcoming draft. Damian Lillard, the franchise cornerstone, was traded to Milwaukee in October 2023, clearing $215 million in future salary obligations and accelerating the rebuild.
Dundon's ownership changes the calculus for sponsors, media partners, and coaching candidates. He has a record of squeezing efficiency from operations—he consolidated the Hurricanes' front office, renegotiated arena lease terms in Raleigh, and turned the team profitable within two years of his $420 million purchase in 2018. That playbook likely applies here: expect staff consolidation, a push for a new or renovated arena (the Moda Center opened in 1995), and a hunt for local corporate partnerships that don't overlap with his Carolina assets. The ROOT Sports deal is the immediate pressure point. Regional sports networks are imploding—Diamond Sports filed for bankruptcy in 2023, Bally Sports Northwest exited the market—and the Blazers need a replacement by 2025 or risk losing $50-60 million annually in media revenue. Dundon's known preference is for direct-to-consumer streaming bundles, which he explored with the Hurricanes before signing a traditional RSN extension in 2022.
The dual-franchise setup also gives Dundon unusual cross-sport leverage. He can package naming rights, jersey patches, and arena signage across two leagues, two markets, and two fan bases. That's valuable to national brands—automotive, financial services, consumer tech—looking for broad reach without the clutter of a dozen local deals. It's also a hedge: if NBA media rights jump in the next negotiation cycle (current deals expire in 2025), Portland's valuation rises; if the NHL continues its quiet growth trajectory, the Hurricanes appreciate. He's not the first dual-sport owner—Fenway Sports Group has the Red Sox and Penguins, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment runs the Leafs and Raptors—but he's the first to pair an NHL team in a mid-market with an NBA team in a West Coast city. That geography matters for scheduling, for sponsor flight routes, for where executives live.
The coaching hire comes next. Chauncey Billups was fired in April after a 21-61 season, and the Blazers have interviewed several candidates, including assistants from playoff teams. Dundon will want someone who can develop young talent—Portland holds three first-round picks over the next two drafts—and tolerate a slow rebuild without leaking frustration to the press. He also needs a GM willing to operate under tight financial controls. The Blazers currently sit $18 million under the luxury tax, and Dundon has never paid the tax in Carolina, even during playoff runs.
The sale closed faster than expected. Initial reports in December suggested a prolonged approval process, but the Board of Governors moved cleanly, likely because Dundon's financials were pre-vetted during his Hurricanes purchase and his Topgolf investment. No debt concerns, no regulatory entanglements, no questions about his liquidity. The vote was private, but league sources indicated unanimous or near-unanimous approval, with no governors requesting additional diligence.
Watch for the ROOT Sports replacement announcement by October, when the 2024-25 season tips off. Dundon will need a media deal locked before sponsors commit to next season's inventory. Also watch the draft: if Portland takes a guard at No. 7, it signals a multi-year rebuild; if they trade the pick for a veteran, Dundon wants immediate competitiveness, tax line be damned. And watch Raleigh: the Hurricanes' season overlaps with the NBA's, and Dundon will need to split time between coasts or delegate more than he has in the past.
The takeaway
Dundon adds West Coast NBA exposure to his NHL and golf assets, setting up cross-sport sponsorship packages and a **2025** media rights deadline in Portland.
Two hundred brands. Eight months on the desk. $0.003 an impression.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — imprinting on real authorized stock for Nike, YETI, Patagonia, The North Face, Carhartt, Stanley, Peter Millar, TUMI, Montblanc, Moleskine, Waterford, and 190 more. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign: The Stash Edge, Markets Edge, Sports Edge, Voyage Edge, Black's Edge, House Edge, the Article Engine, Ramen, and Fending.
$0.003per impression · vs ~$0.007 digital CPM
8 monthson the desk · vs 0.8s for a digital ad
200+authorized brands · Nike · YETI · Patagonia
9 deskspublishing daily · since 1997
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.