Bills owner Terry Pegula has gotten his daughter Laura involved in team ownership in the wake of his wife Kim’s scary health battle.
The Athletic reported Wednesday that Terry, 73, transferred a small percentage of the Bills to Laura last year, three days after Terry became Kim’s guardian in the wake of Kim’s 2022 heart attack.
The couple used to have 50-50 ownership of the Bills, per The Athletic; they also own the Buffalo Sabres.
A longtime Pegula family associate told The Athletic “Kim is not coming back” to either franchise’s front office.
The 41-year-old Laura, who is Terry’s daughter from his first marriage, represented the family during NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s state of the league address last month at the owners’ meetings in Orlando, the report said.
The report said that Laura has become a “more conspicuous presence” over the past year.
That includes sitting in on Q&A sessions with Bills and Sabres employees, representing the team during commissioner Roger Goodell’s state of the NFL address and being the lone child in attendance when the Sabres announced Lindy Ruff as their new head coach last month.
However, The Athletic reported that employees, including executives, are confused and “unclear on Kim’s prognosis and Laura’s role.”
Tennis star Jessica Pegula, Terry and Kim’s daughter, opened up about her now-54-year-old mom’s condition in an essay for The Players’ Tribune last February.
“She is dealing with significant expressive aphasia and significant memory issues,” Jessica wrote at the time. “She can read, write, and understand pretty well, but she has trouble finding the words to respond. It is hard to deal with and it takes a lot of patience to communicate with her, but I thank God every day that we can still communicate with her at all. The doctors continue to be blown away by her recovery, considering where she started, and her determination is the driving force of that.”
In that same story, Jessica wrote about being the president of the Bills and Sabres when her playing career was over.
But shortly after Jessica’s essay was published, The Athletic reported that her husband, Taylor Gahagen, was fired by Terry as director of corporate development.
And during that same time period, Laura was given an equity stake in the Bills.
