Tom Benson owned two professional sports teams, a sprawling business empire worth $2 billion, and one of the most poisonous family dynamics in American sports. On Friday, the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner quietly made the whole ugly mess disappear -- reaching a confidential settlement with the trustees representing his estranged daughter and grandchildren just days before a federal trial was set to blow the lid off the franchises' financial secrets.
Attorney Thomas Flanagan, representing one of the trustees, confirmed that both sides had finalized the deal, resolving the technical issues around payments and guarantees. After years of courtroom warfare pitting Benson against his own daughter Renee and her two children, Rita and Ryan LeBlanc, the billionaire patriarch bought himself something money usually cannot: silence.
The deal that almost was not
The bones of this settlement had been sitting on the table since June 2016, when the parties agreed to strip non-voting shares of the Saints and Pelicans from the trusts Benson had originally set up for his heirs. But the devil lived in the details -- specifically, how and when payments would actually land -- and those technical sticking points dragged the resolution out for more than a year.
In a statement released through the Saints organization, Benson framed the ending in the flattest corporate language available: "This has been a long and difficult time, and we are pleased this is behind us. We have many great projects ahead, and we look forward to them. Our number one goal remains the same: winning championships in football and basketball."
The trustees responded in kind, pivoting hard toward civic pride. "The New Orleans Saints are among the elite franchises in professional sports, and the Pelicans are establishing themselves as a highly competitive and successful team in their own right," they said. "Keeping these teams in New Orleans and ensuring their vitality has always been the highest priority."
Both statements read like they were drafted by the same PR firm. Neither acknowledged the scorched-earth litigation that preceded them.
How a billionaire cut his own family out
The whole saga detonated in January 2015, when Benson made the kind of announcement that turns Thanksgiving dinners into depositions: he no longer wanted his daughter and grandchildren to inherit shares of the Saints and Pelicans. Instead, he intended to hand full ownership of both franchises to his third wife, Gayle Benson, whom he had married in 2004. Then he fired Renee and her children from their executive positions within the two organizations.
The lawsuits landed like dominoes across multiple jurisdictions -- Texas and Louisiana courts, state and federal.
At the center of the fight was Benson's plan to swap his heirs' team shares for other assets, primarily more than $500 million in promissory notes. The trustees balked, arguing Benson had not demonstrated that the exchange was fair. Benson sued in federal court to force the trustees to accept the deal, setting the stage for the confrontation that just settled with a whisper rather than a bang.
A separate Texas case resolved in 2016, but the federal lawsuit and a companion suit in Louisiana civil court kept the family conflict burning. That civil case was arguably the nastiest of the bunch: it centered on allegations that Gayle Benson and a tight circle of Saints and Pelicans executives were manipulating Tom Benson -- then in his late 80s -- to systematically cut his daughter and grandchildren out of the family business empire.
The question nobody wanted asked out loud
Renee and her children went for the jugular. They challenged Tom Benson's mental competency in court, asking a Louisiana judge to declare him incapable of managing his own affairs. The lawsuit painted a picture of a man who had built a $2 billion empire spanning the Saints, the Pelicans, auto dealerships, a television station, and real estate -- and who was now, his own family argued, being steered by people with their own interests at heart.
The trial that followed was closed to the public, which tells you something about what both sides feared would come out. When it was over, Judge Kern Reese ruled that while Benson showed signs of forgetfulness consistent with his age, he remained mentally competent and understood the consequences of his decisions. The ruling allowed Benson to keep running his business interests and dealt a devastating blow to his estranged heirs' bid to claw back influence over the family holdings.
For Renee and her children, the competency trial had represented something beyond money -- a potential doorway back into a relationship with the patriarch who had shut them out. But the trustees overseeing the case were legally bound to protect the heirs' financial interests only. The personal wreckage was outside their jurisdiction.
A $70 million bet that paid off a hundred times over
Whatever you make of his family relationships, Tom Benson's business instincts were staggering. He purchased the New Orleans Saints in 1985 for roughly $70 million and transformed a franchise that had been a punchline into one of the most respected operations in the NFL. Under his ownership, the Saints won their first Super Bowl in 2010. In 2012, he expanded his sports portfolio by acquiring the New Orleans Pelicans for $338 million, further entrenching himself as the most powerful figure in New Orleans sports and business.
By the time of the settlement, the Saints were valued at over $1 billion and the Pelicans at more than $600 million. The family feud was never just about bruised feelings. It was a fight over an empire worth north of $1.6 billion in franchise value alone.
The war is over but the story is not
This settlement resolves the immediate legal battles, but it does not prevent Tom Benson's estranged heirs from contesting his will after his death. The quiet ending is, in that sense, a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. For now, Benson retains full control of his sports empire, with Gayle positioned to inherit the teams upon his passing.
"We're looking forward to what lies ahead," Benson said in his statement. It was the kind of line designed to close a chapter. Whether it actually does depends on how long the next one takes to open.
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