(The Times-Picayune/NOLA) - For nearly four decades, the New Orleans Saints have been owned by a Benson. During most of that time, it was Tom, a son of the 7th Ward who came home to buy the team, nurturing it from irrelevance into an NFL powerhouse and the pride of the city.
Since his death in 2018, it has fallen to his third wife, Gayle, to serve as overseer of the Saints, the New Orleans Pelicans and a broad collection of businesses and charitable endeavors.
But at some point, the Benson reign will end, as Gayle, 74, has no heirs. The plan for the team and the rest of the Benson empire at that point has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Saints organization.
Until now.
When Gayle Benson dies, the Saints will be sold. The proceeds — likely billions of dollars — will be given away through charities to benefit the people of New Orleans. And team executives are already working to ensure that whoever buys the Saints will keep them in the city.
The succession plan is something no one anticipates being enacted anytime soon, but it’s ready to go and has been approved by the NFL. When it happens, the results will be transformational both for the Saints organization and the city. According to local philanthropy leaders, a multibillion-dollar bequest aimed at the New Orleans community would be the largest in Louisiana history.
"I can’t take it with me," Gayle Benson said. "God gives us gifts, and this is a gift. I am a steward for this (organization). And we help other people with it. My wish is to scatter all the good and gifts that God and Tom have given me to this city and community."
Gayle Benson's succession plan is on firm footing. But Tom's relatives can still attack it.
In a multi-part series over the next five days, The Times-Picayune will take an in-depth look at the future of the city’s two major sports franchises in the fourth year of Gayle Benson’s ownership. In addition to the immediate futures of the teams, the series will examine the long-term prospects for the clubs as team executives try to keep them competitive and position them for an eventual ownership transfer.
But it starts with the succession plan, which has been the subject of intense speculation since Tom Benson died.
Team executives declined to provide trust documents, the written succession plan or other documentation, but Gayle Benson, Saints President Dennis Lauscha and other officials laid out the plan established by Tom and Gayle before Tom’s death and revealed details of how it will work during a series of interviews with The Times-Picayune and WVUE-TV.
The idea to distribute the largesse to local charities originated in 2015 during estate-planning discussions with Tom Benson, shortly after he won a well-publicized court case against his daughter, Renee Benson; granddaughter, Rita Benson LeBlanc; and grandson, Ryan LeBlanc, over control of his estate.
Tom Benson, who had owned the Saints since 1985 and the Pelicans since 2012, originally planned to hand control of the teams to his daughter and two grandchildren, known colloquially as the 3 Rs, with Renee Benson receiving a controlling interest of the two sports franchises, and Rita and Ryan each receiving smaller pieces. But he abruptly changed his succession plan in 2015 and transferred ownership of the teams to a trust benefiting his wife, touching off a bitter and public family feud.
Gayle Benson became the principal owner of the Saints and Pelicans in 2018 after Tom died. According to the succession plan, she has the authority to decide the benefactors and how the money will be distributed.
Benson has provided a list of beneficiaries to Lauscha, who will serve as the executor of the estate. She isn’t disclosing the organizations that are already in line for gifts, but Lauscha said most operate in the fields of education, health care, arts and sciences and humanitarian causes.
Some of the proceeds of the sales could go toward outstanding debts, taxes or other noncontrolling shareholders. And not all of the money will be given out immediately. The funds that remain after distributions to the charities on Benson's list will be held in a trust chaired by Lauscha. An advisory board, which is expected to include executives that currently help run the Saints and Pelicans, will award grants annually to various applicants after evaluating their proposals.
Under Benson succession plan, Dennis Lauscha will be one of most influential New Orleanians
"We’re going to all die one day," Benson said. "You have to do something with the money. Giving makes me happy. That’s where my pleasure comes from, in having enough money to give away and help the community. It was a no-brainer for me."
The NFL does not require ownership approval of succession plans. Instead, each plan is reviewed and approved by the league’s general counsel and finance committee. Saints officials said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has endorsed Benson’s plan and signed off on Lauscha as executor.
"The league is fine with it," Lauscha said. "Every year the NFL requires that teams submit what their succession plans are going to be, and we’ve been filing ours since the league mandated it a handful of years ago."
League spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed that "the Saints submitted the plan to the NFL in accordance with league policy."
‘Transformational’
The Saints franchise has increased in value by an average of 11% annually over the past decade, according to Forbes, and is currently valued at $2.85 billion. Depending on when the deal takes place, the Saints’ sale price, some experts estimated, could be much higher.
Benson’s plan mirrors the one instituted by former Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson in 2014, when he bequeathed proceeds from the $1.4 billion sale of the team to the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation.
"We’re talking potentially billions of dollars," Lauscha said. "There’s nothing like it. We can do a tremendous amount of good."
The biggest community and private foundations currently dedicated to philanthropy in Louisiana measure the worth of their assets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, said Andy Kopplin, president of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which has a $460 million endowment.
Few cities boast a foundation the size of the one that Gayle Benson is planning that is focused primarily on the region, said Kopplin, who could only think of the $15 billion, Indianapolis-centric Lilly Foundation as an existing example.
Depending on how much the teams sell for, and because of the rules governing such groups, Benson’s foundation could be doling out between $150 million and $250 million annually.
"If you think of what it can do for economic competitiveness, educational leadership and community development, it can be really transformational," Kopplin said of that level of giving. "It can propel our city and region forward."
Since launching the Gayle and Tom Benson Charitable Foundation in 2007, the Bensons have donated more than $100 million to New Orleans-area causes and charities. Major donations have been made to Ochsner Health, the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Brother Martin High School and Second Harvest Food Bank, among others.
Lisa Keitges, an independent major gifts fundraising consultant based in New York, said that such a large gift aimed at New Orleans would allow community leaders to attempt to address endemic ills before they happen — and not just when disaster strikes.
"This is being proactive," said Keitges, who has also previously worked in New Orleans. "This is a way to take a step forward."
The sale
The sale of the Saints, when it happens, will be the biggest shift in the franchise since Benson bought the team from John Mecom in 1985. At the time, the Saints were a perennial cellar-dweller.
They didn’t record a winning season in Mecom’s 19-year tenure and were a revolving door for coaches and executives. Benson brought immediate stability to the organization by hiring respected general manager Jim Finks and coach Jim Mora. In the second year of Benson’s tenure, the Saints went 12-3 and earned the franchise’s first playoff berth.
For the next decade, the Saints remained competitive on the field, but off it, they struggled to keep pace with their big-market peers. The NFL business model changed in the mid-1990s, when the landmark 1993 Collective Bargaining Agreement placed a premium on nonshared revenues from home stadiums. Construction of new stadiums swept across the league, dividing the membership between clubs with new venues and those without.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, there had already been rumors about whether Benson, who for years had publicly lobbied the state for a new stadium, was considering a move. But during the chaotic months after the storm, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue intervened and rallied support for the team from the New Orleans business community.
In 2009, the Saints signed a new long-term lease agreement with the state and the team, led by Sean Payton and Drew Brees, soon ascended to what was once an unthinkable height when they blitzed through the NFL playoffs and raised the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the first time in franchise history. At that point, the Saints and the city were fused indelibly.
Today, the Saints are in the midst of an unprecedented run of success. A second Super Bowl berth has eluded them, but since 2017, they have notched four consecutive NFC South Division titles and have been the league’s winningest team during the regular season. They are off to a 2-1 start in their first season since Brees announced his retirement.
At the same time, thanks to a concession-heavy deal from the state — and taxpayers — they have ranked in the top third of the league in net operating income, the only small-market team to consistently enjoy such a lofty financial perch.
"We’re a small market, but we don’t feel like we take a back seat to anybody," Lauscha said. "We expect to be No. 1 in everything that we do."
Making a deal
The Saints’ current lease took effect in 2010 and expires in 2025. Team and state officials are negotiating a new contract that would extend the team’s lease of the Caesars Superdome and keep the team in Louisiana through 2035 and potentially longer. The Saints’ buy-in is contingent upon completion of an ongoing $450 million renovation of the 47-year-old stadium. The 10-year lease extension includes a pair of 10-year options for the team to potentially extend the deal to 2045 and 2055.
For all the Saints' planning, the team's future in the city may come down to how Lauscha and his counterparts at the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, known as the Superdome Commission, are able to structure a deal.
By NFL standards, New Orleans is one of the smallest and poorest markets in the league. The 15-year lease that began in 2010 helped boost the Saints’ bottom line. In July, the team added to its coffers by signing a 20-year naming rights deal with Caesars Entertainment worth a reported $6.4 million per year. While the Superdome is owned by the state, the lease agreement allows the Saints to keep the money from the naming rights.
A New Orleans native, Lauscha said one of the primary goals in signing a new long-term lease agreement is to contractually bind the team to New Orleans.
NFL policy prevents a team from relocating to another market if the move would breach an existing lease, unless "the club and its landlord agree to terminate the lease or if there is a final court order terminating the lease or concluding that the lease does not preclude a relocation."
League rules also require that a single person have at least 30% equity in a team and allow for potential owners to borrow only $500 million of a sale price, essentially limiting the candidate pool for NFL ownership to billionaires. Gayle Benson was listed as Louisiana’s only billionaire in Forbes’ annual list of the world’s wealthiest people.
Lauscha said he regularly receives calls from interested suitors for both the Saints and Pelicans and is compiling a list of potential prospects.
The league typically allows teams up to five years to find a new owner and complete a sale. Lauscha said "it certainly won't be a rushed decision," and Benson added that her instructions on the sale are clear.
"That's going to be one of our stipulations when we sell the team — that it stays here," said Benson. "Dennis won’t sell it to another person that wants to take it away."
Should something happen to Lauscha, the succession plan calls for Saints executives Mickey Loomis and Greg Bensel to serve as co-executors of the estate.
The lease
Lauscha argues that a beneficial lease agreement for the Saints is key to keeping the next owner from considering a move elsewhere.
"Our intent absolutely is to structure the deals in a way so that both teams can be here for a very long time," Lauscha said. "We want to make sure if a new owner is coming into this market, not only do they see that this market is viable, but they also can see that financially it makes sense."
Still, even if a new owner did have wandering eyes, industry experts say the list of viable untapped NFL markets is shorter than ever. Longtime NFL stalking horses Los Angeles and Las Vegas are no longer available. While San Diego; St. Louis; Oakland, California; Portland, Oregon; and Austin, Texas, have all been mentioned as interested suitors, each has its own set of hurdles to clear.
Gayle Benson said that despite the potential interest, her husband's wishes were for the team to remain in New Orleans.
"When Tom bought this team, he didn’t have a lot of money," she said. "Everything that he had, had to be given to keep the team. He worked really hard to get the Pelicans here. He sacrificed a lot. I want to make sure that we keep the teams here. I want them to stay in New Orleans forever."
In the next installment of "The Succession," a look at the New Orleans Pelicans. The NBA team hasn’t seen the same success as the Saints, but officials are hopeful they can turn a corner.
Staff writer Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed to this report.
