Buffalo Bills President and co-owner Terry Pegula is very visible in the national sports media. Pegula is a second-generation Rusyn American who was born March 25th, 1951, in the former anthracite coal town of Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Pegula’s paternal grandparents, Andrew and Ana (Cheko) Pegula, came from Hanigovce, Sabinov District in the Prešov region of Slovakia.
From a blue collar upbringing in Carbondale, located 15 miles north of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Pegula has become one of the most recognizable figures in the American sports world.
He owns the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League (NHL) and, with a consortium of private equity firms and athletes, the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL). Pegula serves as the President of both teams.
In 2022, Forbes Magazine ranked Pegula number 128 among the top 400 billionaires in America, placing his net worth at more than $7 billion. He has interests in natural gas development, real estate, entertainment, and his major league football and hockey teams.
Pegula grew up in the Upper Valley of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Scranton Preparatory School in 1969. His father, Myron, worked for a coal mining company as a truck driver. Pegula’s first job as a teen was driving a watering truck in the mines around Carbondale—a 1949 Brockway tractor-trailer without doors or windows.
After high school, Pegula received a scholarship to Penn State University, where he started as a mathematics major before switching to petroleum and natural gas engineering. After graduation, he joined Getty Oil in Victoria, Texas.
With a $7,500 loan from his family and friends, he founded East Resources in 1981. Over the next three decades, Pegula built his business into one of the largest privately held companies in the country. By 2000, the company had made its first gas discoveries in Central New York State and in North-Central Pennsylvania, a region increasingly known for its rich Marcellus shale gas, a mile or so beneath the surface.
Pegula sold East Resources to Royal Dutch Shell in 2010 for $4.7 billion and he used the proceeds to build his sports empire. He bought the Buffalo Sabres for $189 million in 2011, and outbid other groups to buy the Buffalo Bills for $1.4 billion in 2014. In 2010, he and his wife donated $88 million to Penn State University for what is now the Pegula Ice Arena, a premier ice facility for the community and home to Penn State’s men’s and women’s ice hockey teams.
Pegula took a more active role with his NFL team in 2023, naming himself president and CEO of the Buffalo Bills. He is also a member of the NFL’s Health and Safety Committee.
Pegula is just one of 45 people contained in George Pawlush’s book “They Came To Play”. Published in July 2025, the book profiles athletes and major contributors with Rusyn ancestral roots, who reached the highest level of their professional or Olympic sport. The book is available on Amazon.
