Gayle Benson: The Day She Inherited the Saints and Pelicans

On March 15, 2018, New Orleans lost Tom Benson and gained a new owner for two professional teams. This film follows that single Thursday, then travels back through Hurricane Katrina, a Super Bowl win and a bitter family court fight to show how interior designer Gayle Benson came to control the Saints and the Pelicans. We look at the money, the estimated values, the big tests that followed, the controversies, and the quiet lifestyle of one of the few women to lead both an NFL and an NBA franchise. All figures are publicly reported estimates. Chapters 0:00 Introduction 1:15 The Car Dealer Who Bought a Team 2:08 The Designer Beside the Owner 2:37 The Storm Nobody Could Rehearse 3:54 The Comeback That Made a Champion 5:20 A Family at War 6:31 Two Teams, Two Wild Rides 7:21 Scandal, Storms and Hard Questions 8:04 What the Teams Are Worth 8:48 A Quiet Life at the Top 9:23 One Thursday, Remembered Credits Narration: AI voice (Google Cloud Text-to-Speech). Script researched with AI assistance and reviewed before publishing. Pictures and music: • Some scenes are AI-generated illustrations (FLUX.1 [schnell] via Cloudflare Workers AI), not real photographs. • Photo: "St. Patrick’s Day Parade, New Orleans 2024" by Gildardo (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Photo: "Zion Williamson (49488364572)" by Erik Drost (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Photo: "Banks After Ida - Mid-City New Orleans after Hurricane Ida, 2021" by Editor B (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Photo: "Benson Tower in New Orleans during Super Bowl XLVII" by Au Kirk (CC BY 2.0), Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Music: "Ropocolypse 2" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)