Jessica Pegula, Daughter Of Billionaire Buffalo Bills Owner, Heads To U.S. Open Quarter Finals

Topline

Jessica Pegula, the top-ranked American tennis player competing at the U.S. Open and the daughter of oil and gas billionaire Terrence Pegula, will compete in the women’s singles quarter finals of the tournament Wednesday evening.

Key Facts

Pegula, who is the eighth-ranked women’s player in the world, will face Poland’s Iga Swiatek, the world’s top-ranked women’s player.

Pegula’s billionaire father, Terrence Pegula, and her mother, Kim Pegula, are the owners of both the Buffalo Bills football and Buffalo Sabres ice hockey teams.

Terry purchased the Bills for $1.4 billion with money he made in oil and gas, and Kim serves as the president of the holding company that manages both the Bills and the Sabres.

Pegula and her doubles partner, fellow American Coco Gauff, lost their first-round doubles match, and Gauff lost her Tuesday quarter finals match.

Key Background

Terrence (Terry) Pegula is worth $6.7 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates. His most valuable asset is the Buffalo Bills, worth $3 billion after deducting team debt; he also owns the Buffalo Sabres, worth $370 million, and has about half a billion dollars’ worth of land as well as the HarborCenter, a hockey-themed mixed-use development in Buffalo, New York. His JKLM Energy, a natural gas company he founded, is worth about $100 million. Pegula made his fortune in oil and gas and in 2010 sold the bulk of his company East Resources’ assets to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion. The following year, he purchased the Sabres for $189 million and in 2014 picked up the Bills for $1.4 billion, outbidding groups led by high-profile figures like then future President Donald Trump and rock star Jon Bon Jovi.