Buffalo Rumblings
The Buffalo Bills welcomed a new limited ownership group this past year, including two women.
In December, the Buffalo Bills sold limited partnerships in their organization to groups of investors. Included in that group were high-profile former NBA players Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady along with professional soccer player Jozy Altidore.
In addition to those three professional athletes, owners Kim and Terry Pegula welcomed two women to the ownership group, a goal of the Pegulas when they began looking at the possibility of adding investors to the ownership mix.
Since the Pegulas purchased the team in 2014, the Bills have had female ownership in one form or another, with Kim taking on a huge role, but that was severely altered in 2022.
Kim Pegula was team president of the Bills in addition to being the owner, spearheading the plans for the new stadium among other major projects, before suffering a debilitating medical event in June 2022. Following a cardiac arrest event in her home, she experienced “significant expressive aphasia and memory issues” according to her daughter, Jessica, and didn’t make another public appearance until Bills training camp in July 2024.
“Now we come to the realization that all of that is most likely gone. That she won’t be able to be that person anymore,” wrote Jessica Pegula in The Players Tribune in February 2023.
Following that post, a court-appointed panel ruled Kim was incapacitated and placed her assets into a trust that March, including her 50% stake in the Buffalo Bills. Her husband was installed as co-trustee alongside their business partner Bob Long.
“Kim is not coming back,” a source told Tim Graham of The Athletic at the time.
In addition to her business acumen, Terry said Kim brought a caring touch to her work within their various organizations.
“We all miss her, especially I do,” Terry Pegula said in December. “She was always the personal part of it, sending out Christmas cards, making cookies for the coaches. She’d be up at 3 o’clock in the morning every Sunday when we played making cookies for the coaches. We all miss that.”
This week, both Kim and Terry were on hand to honor Buffalo Sabres personality Rob Ray as he was inducted into the Buffalo Sabres Hall of Fame. The Pegulas own the Sabres in addition to the Bills as part of a huge portfolio of sports teams and business holdings. The couple watched the ceremony from their private box.
Almost immediately after the court’s ruling, Terry Pegula transferred a portion of the team’s ownership to his daughter from his first marriage, per The Athletic. Laura Pegula had been involved in the Pegula business previously, but never the sports teams, and since 2023 has been sitting in at NFL league meetings as the team builds a succession plan for the 73-year-old Terry. With Kim almost 20 years younger, that...
