Jessica Pegula plays tennis for money. Her parents own the Buffalo Bills. She told reporters she might work for her parents when she stops playing tennis. This counts as news because someone asked her a question and she answered it.
Her father Terry Pegula bought the Bills in 2014 for $1.4 billion. Jessica hits a ball with a racket. The connection between these two facts has sent financial media into a frenzy of speculation about nothing. She said "could be" and "after my career" which translates to "I have no plans but didn't want to say no to a reporter's dumb question."
Retail traders are now frantically Googling whether the Bills are publicly traded. They are not. This will not stop someone from buying shares of MSG Networks thinking it's close enough. The Venn diagram of people who care about this story and people who understand how private equity works is two circles in different time zones.
Pegula ranks 7th in the world in tennis. She has won zero Grand Slam singles titles. Her qualification to run an NFL franchise appears to be that her last name is Pegula and she exists. This is actually how most NFL franchises are run so the bar is lower than you think.
The Bills are worth roughly $3.7 billion now. Jessica's plan to maybe help run them someday after she retires from tennis at an unspecified date has exactly zero impact on that valuation. But please, write another 800 words about what this means for the future of sports franchises and family succession planning.
She's 30 years old and still competing at the highest level of professional tennis. She'll retire when her knees give out or she gets bored, whichever comes first. Then maybe she'll take meetings in Buffalo. Or maybe she'll do literally anything else. The certainty here is overwhelming.
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