Barron Hilton, who oversaw the vast expansion of his father’s hotel empire and took part in changing the pro sports landscape as an original club owner in the American Football League, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. The last survivor of the A.F.L.’s founding ownership, he was 91 .

The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, of which he was chairman emeritus, announced the death.

Mr. Hilton embarked on a business career at 19, when he acquired a citrus distribution company in the Los Angeles area. He had turned down an offer from his father, Conrad Hilton, for a $150-a-week job and a chance to work his way up in the chain he founded in 1919 when he bought his first hotel, in Cisco, Tex., capitalizing on an oil boom in the area.

Barron Hilton’s citrus business proved successful. But he joined Hilton Hotels in the early 1950s, became a vice president in 1954 and then rose to president and chief executive in 1966 and chairman in 1979, when his father died.

“Barron, like Conrad, was a man who paid great attention to the day-to-day operations of his hotels,” J. Randy Taraborrelli wrote in “The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty” (2014), explaining that Barron Hilton reduced company payrolls, economized on food preparation costs and centralized purchasing in the 1960s.