Seattle’s New Sports Era: How the Seahawks, Mariners, Kraken and Sounders Are Turning the City Into One of America’s Most Underrated Sports Markets

For decades, Seattle wore the label of an “almost” sports town. Almost a champion. Almost a national headline. Almost, but never quite the conversation. Between the summer of 2025 and the spring of 2026, that story rewrote itself in real time. In the span of roughly nine months, the Emerald City delivered a Super Bowl parade, a baseball pennant race that came within eight outs of history, an unforgettable summer of global soccer, and a hockey franchise still searching for its identity but no longer invisible. The result is a city that has quietly become one of the most consequential sports markets in North America. The growth of Seattle’s major sports organizations has captured the attention of local residents and sports fans more broadly, including those looking to add an extra thrill through sports betting by taking advantage of offers such as the BetMGM bonus code.

The Seahawks Reach the Summit Again

The headline act, inevitably, is the Seattle Seahawks. The 2025 season, their 50th in the NFL and the second under head coach Mike Macdonald, ended with a franchise-best 14 and 3 regular-season record, the NFC West title, the conference’s number one seed, and a 29 to 13 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX. It is the second Lombardi Trophy in franchise history, the first since the 2013 season. What makes the title compelling is not just the result but the rebuild that produced it. Longtime stars Tyler Lockett, Geno Smith and DK Metcalf all departed during the offseason. The team brought in quarterback Sam Darnold, wide receiver Cooper Kupp and linebacker DeMarcus Lawrence. The new core clicked almost immediately. Receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba surpassed 1,000 receiving yards faster than any player in the league and ultimately broke the Seahawks single-season franchise record.

The defense, however, became the signature of the season. Inside the locker room, the unit picked up the nickname “the Dark Side,” and the comparisons to the Legion of Boom of the early 2010s started before the Super Bowl even arrived. The Seahawks closed the year on a ten-game winning streak that ended in Santa Clara at Super Bowl LX. Seattle now enters 2026 as defending champions, with the Week 1 NFL Kickoff Game scheduled at Lumen Field on NBC, according to the team. That kind of marquee positioning, unimaginable just two years ago, signals how thoroughly the national narrative has shifted.

The Mariners’ Painful but Transformational Breakthrough

While the Seahawks delivered the trophy, the Mariners delivered the emotional fuel that may carry Seattle baseball for a generation. In 2025 the Mariners won their first American League West title since 2001, their first AL Division Series since 2001, and reached the AL Championship Series for the first time in 24 years. They got historically close. The ALCS against Toronto ended with a 4 to 3 Blue Jays win in Game 7 on October 20, decided by a seventh-inning go-ahead three-run home run from George Springer. The defeat extended Seattle’s status as the only Major League Baseball franchise that has never appeared in a World Series. The pain, though, came packaged with something Seattle baseball had never had: a generational superstar at his peak. Catcher Cal Raleigh finished the regular season with 60 home runs, breaking the franchise record set by Ken Griffey Jr. and setting major league records for home runs by both a catcher and a switch hitter in a single season. He also won the Home Run Derby, a title Griffey himself captured three times. Raleigh became the first catcher in history to hit even 50 home runs, never mind 60, and the first switch hitter to reach 55.

The roster around him is real. Raleigh, Randy Arozarena, Julio Rodríguez, Bryan Woo and closer Andrés Muñoz were all 2025 All-Stars, and the late-season run that flipped the AL West was driven by a 17 wins in 18 games stretch in September that ranks among the most dominant short bursts of the decade. The emotional residue is doing the work that a trophy could not. As Raleigh put it in spring training, the goal is no longer just to make the postseason but to be “a perennial team where making the playoffs is just an afterthought” and to be competing for World Series titles every year. That is the language of a franchise that has finally stopped apologizing for itself.

The Sounders Take the World Stage

If the Seahawks and Mariners dominated the American conversation, the Seattle Sounders quietly authored one of the most internationally significant chapters of any North American sports franchise in 2025. In June, the Sounders played all three of their FIFA Club World Cup group-stage matches at Lumen Field against reigning Copa Libertadores winners Botafogo, La Liga giants Atlético Madrid, and reigning UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain. They did not advance, but they were competitive in all three, and the tournament reframed Seattle as a legitimate global soccer city.  Then came the historic part. On August 31, 2025, the Sounders defeated Inter Miami 3 to 0 in the Leagues Cup final in front of a club-record 69,314 fans at Lumen Field, becoming the first team to win all five major North American soccer trophies, MLS Cup, U.S. Open Cup, Concacaf Champions Cup, Supporters’ Shield and now the Leagues Cup. The crowd set a new attendance record for any sporting event in Washington State history.

The MLS playoff run ended sooner than hoped. Seattle was eliminated by Minnesota United in a Game 3 penalty shootout after 10 rounds, closing a regular season in which the Sounders finished fifth in the Western Conference at 15 wins, 9 losses and 10 draws for 55 points. The bigger picture is that Seattle is now the only MLS club with a complete trophy case, an institutional credential no marketing campaign can buy.

The Kraken: Building Quietly, but Still Building

The one franchise still searching for its breakthrough is the Seattle Kraken. The 2025-26 season was the fifth in franchise history and the first under new head coach Lane Lambert, who replaced Dan Bylsma on May 29, 2025. The team flirted with playoff contention into March, was in the final Western Conference playoff spot at the trade deadline, and acquired Bobby McMann from Toronto in an attempt to push through. The Kraken instead collapsed down the stretch, winning only 7 of their final 23 games and finishing sixth-last in the NHL.

It is the kind of season that would feel discouraging in isolation. In the context of what is happening across the rest of the Seattle sports calendar, it reads more like a franchise still finding its footing inside a market that has suddenly raised the bar around it. Climate Pledge Arena keeps drawing, the player development pipeline is intact, and the Kraken now operate as part of an ecosystem that has learned, finally, how to expect more.

Why the Market Has Been Underrated

The case for Seattle as an undervalued sports city now writes itself. Four major-league teams, four national venues, one Super Bowl champion, one near-pennant, one global tournament host, and one trophy-completing soccer dynasty in a single calendar window. Add the World Cup coming to North America in 2026 and a Sounders organization built to capitalize, and the city’s sports profile has changed shape entirely. The phrase “underrated sports market” implies something still hidden. After 2025 and 2026, Seattle is no longer hidden. It is simply being seen properly for the first time.