It’s rumored that Musk is in talks right now with the Bills

It has been rumored for some time that Kim and Terry Pegula are interested in selling their share of the Buffalo Bills for the right price. Terry Pegula is a multi-billionaire who made most of his money in fracking. He is the current president of the Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Sabres and a few smaller teams in Buffalo and Rochester, New York. Pegula purchased the Buffalo Sabres in 2011 for $189 million and the Buffalo Bills in 2014 after agreeing to $1.4 billion terms with the estate of Ralph Wilson in a bidding war that included Donald Trump. After the purchase of the Bills, the Terry and Kim Pegula set up a holding company called Pegula Sports and Entertainment which included all the teams they owned and a record label. Kim Pegula was announced as the President and CEO of all franchises in 2018 and she ran the operations of the teams until she suffered a cardiac incident in 2022, which by all accounts, was so debilitating it took away all means for her to act as president and make any informed decisions. Consequently, Pegula Sports and Entertainment was dissolved in 2023 and the President and CEO title for all assets reverted to Terry Pegula.

With Kim no longer able to run the operation and with Terry, age 73, apparently not interested in making this his full time job (it seems their kids aren’t interested in taking it on either), he and his wife floated the idea of selling off the franchises and particularly the Buffalo Bills, whose value has skyrocketed thanks to the recent success of the organization (Forbes pegs the Bills’ current value at $4.2 billion). Moreover, the value of the NFL as a whole has soared to unforeseen levels, much of it attributed to the legalization of sports betting in the U.S. after SCOTUS struck down PASPA in 2017.

>While interest in the sale of the team by the Pegulas was never made public, Elon Musk took the league by surprise in November of 2024 after the Bills beat the K.C. Chiefs in a regular season game, announcing that he was going to purchase 100% of the team and was prepared to pay Tom Brady $49 million to be head coach of the team. At the time it was not known if Musk was serious or not, but Kim Pegula certainly indicated she was willing to let Musk have the team if the price was right. And Musk for his part posted on X his intentions to buy the team and, as was the case when Musk said he would pay $43 billion for Twitter and then went through with it, most felt that if he indicated that it will happen, then it would eventually come to fruition.

Not much was said about Musk’s interest in the Bills for at least two months after, since Musk has been focusing his efforts in running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump and trying to determine how many people he could fire from the federal government. But the rumors once again circulated in January when a figure was finally floated for the purchase price. Reports indicated that Musk was willing to pay $9.5 billion and sources close to the Bills organization have told me the deal is all but done and the announcement of the sale will happen before the end of April.

While $9.5 billion is more than what Forbes has said franchise is worth, Musk by all accounts has been a huge fan of the franchise ever since he lived in Canada and followed the team while attending university at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, which is about 2 hours north of Rochester and about 2.5 hours from Toronto. Musk met his first wife, Justine, while attending Queen’s University and Musk’s mother and current partner are all Canadian, so while he has no interest in the CFL, he does have interest in a major sports team close to the Canadian border, which could be useful in his current role in the Trump administration as well. It has also been reported that Musk envied Mark Cuban for being a celebrity billionaire that owned a major sports franchise, although Cuban has given up ownership of the Dallas Mavericks, and Musk believes that owning a championship team in the biggest U.S. sport will only help increase both his reputation and worth.

The Bills ownership would also help diversify Musk’s portfolio which for now includes Tesla, X, and SpaceX and could help distract from the massive recent collapse of Tesla stock after Hertz sold off their Tesla cars leading to a glut of Tesla cars on the market and the resulting resale value of the cars at less than 1/3 of the purchase cars even with low mileage. In fact, most Tesla owners say they have no intentions of every upgrading because there is simply no value in trading in the cars. And very few dealers will take Teslas as trade-ins. Despite the Tesla fall in price and the drop in SpaceX value after two rockets recently blew up after take off, Musk’s net worth is still over $340 billion, so he can certainly afford the $9.5 billion purchase price.

I spoke to two Buffalo Bills fans prior to writing the rumor piece to see how they feel about the likely sale and both said they were excited. One fan said that he feels the biggest problem with the Bills that keeps them from winning a championship is bad coaching and bad draft decisions and since Musk becomes heavily involved in all his companies he buys, the fan feels that Musk will have no issue firing coaches if their decisions hurt the team. He also believed Brady would be a great head coach.

The other fan I spoke to said he was excited for a different reason:

“One of the things I hate about the Bills is the stadium. It needs major upgrades including a retractable roof and I believe Musk is the person to help rebuild Ralph Wilson Stadium (actually now called Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park), or better yet take it down and build something new and innovative. I also think the league’s referees are always purposely making bad decisions against the Bills and rigging it for bigger markets like Kansas City, and with Musk having X and the platform to call out the refs regularly, that favoritism will go away or the leagues will have to answer to him.”

So, if the rumors are correct, an announcement will be made shortly that the Buffalo Bills will be purchased by Elon Musk and if other rumors are correct as well, he may even purchase all the holdings of Terry Pegula including the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL. Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire and it seems that this is no longer a matter of if, but rather when, and when is “very soon”. If Musk indeed does by the Bills, then it could turn the league on its head since Musk has proven that winning is all that matters and price is not a major consideration. QB Josh Allen just got a huge deal with a quarter of a billion in guaranteed money, making him the NFL’s highest-paid player, so perhaps the Bills’ sale to Musk is closer than we all think.

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