The billionaire owner of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills has sparked intense backlash after videos of his $100 million megayacht circulated online, as taxpayers have paid nearly a billion dollars toward the team’s new stadium, according to the New York Post.
“The Pegulas are relaxing in Newport while we pay for the stadium?” one self-proclaimed Bills fan commented online, per the Post. “That’s a slap in the face.”
The distraught fan was referring to the family of Terry Pegula, the Bills owner who made his billions largely off of natural gas, including environmentally hazardous fracking operations.
“I bet he pays more to dock that than he does in taxes,” another Bills fan posted to Facebook, per the Post. “Love the bills, but I’m not gonna worship the Pegulas who pay nothing in taxes on money they made hydro fracking.”
Pegula’s megayacht, dubbed Top Five II, is over 200 feet in length, featuring six luxury cabins that can accommodate up to 12 guests, according to YachtCharterFleet.com, where the vessel is available to charter for $550,000 per week.
The backlash came as the Buffalo Bills franchise received what has been called one of the largest public subsidies in NFL history, according to the New York Post.
The deal, pushed through by Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, provided the team with $600 million in state funds toward their new stadium on top of $250 million from Erie County, where Buffalo is located, per the Post.
Economists have blasted the taxpayer giveaway as financially irresponsible, arguing that those resources would be better allocated to things like infrastructure improvements, education, or social services, the Post reported.
Proponents of stadium subsidies have long argued that such projects offer a good return on investment for taxpayers, though decades of research on the topic strongly indicates otherwise.
“The economic case for stadiums rests on three pillars: they create thousands of jobs; they unleash a steady stream of consumption; and they serve as anchors for thriving neighbourhoods,” according to a June 2024 article in the Economist that examined the effectiveness of publicly funded stadium subsidies.
“But a half-century of evidence suggests that the three pillars are rather wobbly,” the Economist warned.
Those thousands of jobs exist mostly during stadium construction, which lasts only for a few years. After that, the actual number of jobs created tends to number in the hundreds, not thousands, the Economist found.
As for providing steady income streams and being anchors for thriving neighborhoods, those claims have been largely unsubstantiated, as well.
“Activity in and around stadiums is sporadic,” the Economist found. This is especially true of football stadiums, given that the sport plays far fewer games than other major U.S. sports like baseball, basketball, and hockey.
“A football stadium hosts about ten games a year,” the Economist noted.
Even with concerts and other events, the Economist concluded that stadiums sit empty the vast majority of the time.
On top of these concerns, communities pay an additional price in the form of opportunity costs, having chosen not to invest those public funds into areas like education.
Meanwhile, as taxpayers foot the bill for a new stadium, Pegula has continued to make his way up the Forbes billionaire list, which currently ranks him as number 154 among the 400 wealthiest Americans.
On top of everything else, billionaire lifestyles, which often include frequent use of megayachts and private planes, take a significant environmental toll, the costs of which are borne by the rest of society.
According to Oxfam, one megayacht generates on average as much planet-heating pollution in one year as the average person would over 585 years.
Even diehard Buffalo Bills fans were not having it.
“Love the Bills, but this stadium deal is robbery,” commented one fan, per the New York Post. “Pegulas pay nothing while we go broke.”
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