Meet Billionaire Tennessee Titans Owner Amy Adams Strunk—And Nine Other Women Changing The Game In The NFL

B efore the Tennessee Titans kicked off their NFL season with a home game against the New York Giants on September 11, team owner Amy Adams Strunk spent nearly two hours with tailgaters outside Nashville’s Nissan Stadium. “Omigod, it’s her,” one young woman shouted, before asking for the requisite photos. The fans, Adams Strunk says, are her favorite part of owning the team, which her late father Bud Adams founded (as the Houston Oilers in 1960) and of which she has been the controlling shareholder since 2015.

“Our fans, to me, are not a statistic,” she says. “I’m going to be the owner that comes up to you and thanks you. ” At 66, Adams Strunk is worth $1.

6 billion from her 50% stake in the Titans and is one of a growing number of women who own NFL teams: 18 of the league’s 32 franchises are at least partially female-owned, with 10 listing women as majority owners or co-owners. Most inherited teams from their fathers, brothers or husbands—or, like the Buffalo Bills’ Kim Pegula and the Cleveland Browns’ Dee Haslam, bought into them with their husbands. But there are signs of change—this summer, Ariel Investments’ Mellody Hobson bought a 5.

5% stake in the Denver Broncos for $245 million as part of the Waltons’ ownership group that also brought in Carrie Walton Penner, granddaughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, with a 30% stake. “Fifty percent of our fans are women,” says Adams Strunk, who is known as “Mom” to the Titans’ faithful. “Even though we’ve never played the game, that doesn’t mean we don’t know the game.

And we have some unique perspectives on reaching women that we can bring to the table. ” While some female owners who inherited NFL teams are hands-off, Adams Strunk not only runs the Titans but has also delivered a stunning turnaround. Since 2016, the squad has had six winning seasons.

More important, she helped bring the NFL draft to Nashville three years ago and has high hopes for the city to host a Super Bowl. It’s a vision her father could not have foreseen. Bud Adams, who died in 2013 at age 90, was a legend in professional football.

A member of the Cherokee nation who made his fortune in oil, he was instrumental in founding the American Football League and started the Oilers for just $25,000. In 1997, when Houston wouldn’t pony up cash to replace the aging Astrodome, he relocated the team to Nashville and its new 69,000-seat stadium. “It was a game-changing moment for this city,” recalls Butch Spyridon, CEO of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp.

“It shocked the entire sports world, and Nashville started to believe in itself a little more. ” But Bud Adams’ death also led to a leadership struggle for the Titans as the team’s losses piled up. Its ownership was split between his two daughters, Adams Strunk and Susie Adams Smith, and the wife and children of their brother, Kenneth Adams III, who died of suicide at 29 in 1987.

After a family scrum—which saw the ousting of her brother-in-law as CEO—Adams Strunk and her nephews wrested control of the team in 2015. “It was a hard decision,” she says, “but my dad’s legacy was very important to me and the boys. ” Adams Strunk had grown up in football, but her father had never wanted his daughters working for the team.

She had spent time as owner of a few of the family’s car dealerships and oil interests, and raising horses (she still has a few dozen on the family ranch in Texas, along with plenty of rescue dogs). “I never thought—ever—that I would be running the football team,” she says. After she took over the Titans, she worked closely with her nephew, Kenneth Adams IV, who had worked for the team under her father since 2007, as well as with Steve Underwood, who she brought back from retirement as the team’s top executive.

Kenneth Adams, who is 38 and a Titans board member, says that having his aunt and other female owners running NFL teams makes a difference: “I think it’s good for the NFL and we need it. It was a long time coming. ” Adams Strunk brought in a new general manager, Jon Robinson, who was blunt about the team’s problems on the field, and spent money on new facilities (including a new indoor training center) and new uniforms.

“When you know you need to fix something you want someone telling you the brutal honest truth,” Adams Strunk says. “Nothing is going to get solved if you don’t know what needs to be done. ” The willingness to spend money differentiated Adams Strunk from her frugal father.

And while she could be tough when fixing problems, Jevon Kearse, the Titans’ former defensive end, says it is her warmth that makes her a different kind of owner. “She’s one of the first people to come up and give me a hug,” he says. “Some of the owners come around for the money.

She gives it a little bit more love. ” And all of that love has paid off. The value of the Titans’ has more than doubled since 2015, to $3.

5 billion from $1. 5 billion, as revenue reached $481 million, according to Forbes’ estimates . Even so, with the average NFL team now worth $4.

5 billion and the Dallas Cowboys reaching a record $8 billion this year, the Titans remain No. 27 (of 32) on the list of most valuable NFL franchises. Adams Strunk credits her success to having no preconceived notions about how to run a team.

“Just because something has been done a certain way forever doesn’t make it the right way anymore,” she says, adding that it’s often easier to come in with big ideas as an outsider. “We talk a lot about being a 60-year-old startup,” says the team’s CEO, Burke Nihill, who took over two years ago. “Amy has encouraged us to challenge everything.

” Next up is the issue that vexed her father: a new stadium. While it is expected to cost more than $2 billion and the city has yet to sign off amid questions over taxpayer funding, Forbes has estimated that it could increase the Titans’ value by $300 million . To pay for their share of the new stadium—the team ownership and an NFL loan are expected to cover at least $700 million—the family will sell some of its other assets.

Adams Strunk believes a new stadium, which would be fully enclosed, could host not only the Titans but also concerts and, yes, that big game with the $7 million commercials. Super Bowl aside, Adams Strunk thinks her father would be a fan of the job she’s done. “I think if he was looking down now,” she says, “he’d be super proud.

” —Reporting by Lisa Elena Rennau.