The NFL season is finally upon us, and for fans of the Buffalo Bills, that's mostly been a reason to celebrate. The Bills are one of the Super Bowl favorites according to most sportsbooks, Josh Allen is back for another MVP campaign after marrying Sinners star Hailee Steinfeld in May, and the team has been featured on the most recent season of Hard Knocks.
Many national pundits, including Bill Simmons ofThe Ringer and Seth Walder of ESPN, have picked the Bills to finally break their franchise-spanning curse and win the Super Bowl on what would be their fifth attempt after four straight runner-up finishes in the '90s. Allen and Steinfeld have given the team some back-page juice that may not be on the level of the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift pairing, but is still noteworthy for one of the NFL's smallest-market teams.
Bills fans, aka the "Bills Mafia," are a famously excitable bunch that is best known for jumping through tables, but there's one thing that's putting a damper on their enthusiasm: Bills owner Terry Pegula, who as of today is estimated by Forbes to be worth $9.3 billion and is the proud owner of a $100 million superyacht, is relying on $850 million from New York taxpayers to help build the team's new Highmark Stadium, which is on track to open next season.
Pegula's riches came from the oil and gas industry, and he's seen his net worth skyrocket in recent years. He's worth $3.6 billion more now than he was just four years ago, enough to easily pay for the new stadium and his custom-built yacht, which he's named "Top Five II" in honor of his five children.
One of his kids, Jessica Pegula, is set to face top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals of the U.S. Open on Thursday. Pegula is the fourth-ranked women's tennis player in the world and has won nine WTA singles titles, but is chasing her first Grand Slam title. In order to be able to see her play easily, Pegula brought his yacht.
With Jess Pegula playing in the US Open semifinal tomorrow night, her dad, Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula, has anchored his $100 million yacht in Manhasset Bay on Long Island.
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) September 3, 2025
That's about a 30-minute drive to watch her play at Arthur Ashe. pic.twitter.com/KugmM16Yns
Terry Pegula's needless $850 million handout is just the latest instance of sports owner welfare
Taxpayer-funded sports stadiums have long been a problem. In a 2023 article entitled "Fields of Failure: The Scandal of Taxpayer Funded Stadiums," Citizens Against Government Waste wrote, "since 2000, states and localities across the country have spent $43.1 billion to build professional sports stadiums." The cost of building stadiums has only risen in recent years, and even though owners like Pegula are richer than ever, these costs are still being passed on to regular people.
Billionaires already use every loophole in the book to pay little to no taxes, and sports owners continue to raise ticket costs and price blue-collar fans out from seeing their teams play live. Season ticket prices to see the Bills this year are up 12 percent compared to last year, and it even costs $150 just to join the waiting list for future seasons.
Owners often use the threat of franchise relocation as leverage to get taxpayer funding for their stadiums, a tactic Pegula himself successfully employed back in 2021. Sometimes those threats are hollow, but sometimes they aren't, as baseball fans recently saw when Oakland A's owner John Fisher, notorious for being one of the cheapest owners in baseball, began the process of moving the team from Oakland to Las Vegas after failing to secure his desired public funding from Oakland for a new stadium. The state of Nevada is paying $380 million towards Fisher's new Vegas ballpark.
Pegula and Fisher are two examples of why fans can never trust that the owners of their favorite teams are on the up and up. They always seem to be there when there's a trophy to be presented or a media rights check to be cashed, but ask them to pay for their own stadium and that's where they seem to draw the line.
While Pegula is eating caviar and drinking wine aboard his yacht, Buffalo residents and the state of New York are stuck footing a large portion of the bill for a stadium they'll never own. That thought may not enter into fans' heads when they gather on Sunday night to take in a titanic Week 1 matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, but in today's uncertain economic times, when it's more difficult than ever to buy a home and raise a family, they'll be feeling it eventually.