Jones owns the Dallas Cowboys, the most valuable franchise in the National Football League. He bought the team in 1989 for $150 million after making his fortune in Texas from oil and gas. Jones also has investments in Comstock Resources as well as real estate, hospitality management and Papa John's franchises.
The majority of Jones's fortune is derived from his ownership of the Dallas Cowboys, the National Football League franchise he purchased in 1989 for a then-record $150 million, Jones said. The team is valued based on an August 2023 analysis by valuation consultants Sportico. Jones owns the whole team and is believed to hold no debt in the organization, according to Peter J. Schwartz, a New York-based valuation consultant.
Jones owns 66% of Comstock Resources, according to the company's 2023 proxy statement.
The value of his cash and other assets is based on information provided a person familiar with the holdings who asked not to be named because the holdings are private. These assets include land owned through a series of entities named Blue Star, a stake in Legends Hospitality Management, and a number of Papa John's franchises.
A spokesperson for the Dallas Cowboys declined to comment on Bloomberg's net worth calculation for the billionaire.
Jerral "Jerry" Jones was raised in the Rose City section of North Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of grocery store owners Pat and Arminta Jones. He attended the University of Arkansas where, on his first day on campus, he met Eugenia "Gene" Chambers, a student and beauty queen, according to a profile of the billionaire by ESPN The Magazine in 2014. They married 18 months later.
At Arkansas, Jones played football and was co-captain of the 1964 Arkansas team that went undefeated and was crowned national champion by the Football Writers of America Association. He graduated from the school in 1965 with a degree in business administration and earned his MBA there the same year, according to his official biography.
Shortly after graduating, Jones decided he wanted to buy a pro team and struck a deal to buy the San Diego Chargers of the then-fledgling American Football League, according to a transcsript of an HBO interview with Jones published by CBS Sports in 2015. That deal fell through when Jones reconsidered given the team's poor financial health. Jones went on to a business in fast food franchises and then into oil wildcatting, where he had the unusual good luck of striking oil in 12 of his first 13 wells, according to a 2009 profile of Jones in the Dallas Observer. The oil business cemented Jones's fortune.
Jones paid $140 million for the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, the largest price paid for an NFL team at the time. He revamped the team, firing the only person to serve as the team's coach, Tom Landry, and named Jimmy Johnson coach and himself general manager, in charge of player personnel. The franchise would go on to win three Super Bowls through 1995.