Oct 7, 2014

Ralph Wilson, Grosse Pointe Shores resident and Buffalo Bills owner, dies at 95 The Wilson family’s 55-year ownership of the Buffalo Bills came to an end on the field Sunday with the NFL team edging the Detroit Lions 17-14. Fitting it ended in Detroit because the late Ralph Wilson was once a minority owner of the Lions, and ran his business empire from Grosse Pointe Shores. Wilson died March 25 at age 95 at his Grosse Pointe Shores home . He founded the Bills in 1959 for $25,000, and at the same time co-founded the American Football League. The AFL merged with the NFL in 1970. The Bills are being sold by Wilson’s estate for $1.4 billion to Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula, and the league’s team owners are expected to give unanimous approval of the ownership transfer on Wednesday. It was Wilson’s wish that the team be sold, and other bidders included Donald Trump and a group fronted by rock star Jon Bon Jovi. The Pegulas eventually outbid them. Forbes in August had estimated the team to be worth $935 million, slightly behind the Lions’ $960 million value estimate. Wilson’s estate has earmarked the money from the Bills’ sale benefit the Grosse Pointe Farms-based Ralph Wilson Foundation. The foundation does philanthropic and charity work in metro Detroit and the Buffalo area, and the money will be spent only in those two areas, according to The Buffalo News. Specifics on how the money will be distributed haven’t been disclosed. A Columbus, Ohio, native, Wilson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009 and was the NFL’s longest-tenured owner at the time of his death. Wilson previously owned 2.5 percent of the Lions, according to a Buffalo News story in 2009. He also owned the Grosse Pointe Park-based investment firm Ralph Wilson Equity Fund LLC. That fund was among the original investors in Ardesta LLC, a venture capital company co-founded in 2000 by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Wilson’s donations funded a number of charities and medical centers, along with the $2.5 million, 10,000-square-foot Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Pro Football Research and Preservation Center at the hall of fame in Canton, Ohio, in 2011. The Bills’ home venue, Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., is named for him. The team won the 1964 and 1965 AFL championships, and lost the Super Bowl four consecutive times from 1990 to 1993. Wilson used his fortune to keep the struggling AFL afloat in the early 1960s, reportedly going so far as to loan the rival Oakland Raiders $400,000 in 1961. The AFL lost $1.4 million in its first three years, the Buffalo newspaper reported him as saying. Topics in this article: Sports