T errence "Terry" Pegula is a self-made American billionaire who built his fortune in the natural gas industry and has since become a major professional sports team owner. An engineer by training, he founded his own oil and gas exploration company, East Resources, in 1983 with a $7,500 loan from family and friends. He achieved massive success by pioneering the use of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," to unlock the vast natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale, a massive rock formation in the Appalachian Basin.

In 2010, he sold the bulk of his company's assets to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion, a deal that cemented his multi-billionaire status. He has since reinvested a significant portion of his fortune into building a sports empire in his beloved city of Buffalo, New York. He and his wife, Kim Pegula, own the city's two major professional sports franchises: the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL) and the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League (NHL). They have also invested heavily in real estate development in downtown Buffalo.