Bills will be paid $78 million for eight-game Toronto series

[PatsFanSince74]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3374222

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Buffalo Bills will receive $78 million -- more than double their calculated 2006 operating income -- to play eight games in Toronto over the next five years.

More in the article.

That's bookoo bucks for a team that always complains that they are a have-not. Let Wilson whine about having to pay into revenue sharing.

I cannot see how they don't move their permanently eventually.

first of all, more power to them for getting the money. as to where they end up, i could see them in LA before Toronto.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

That's crap--get your facts straight. I believe ... Buffalo Bills

Well, that's a lot better than your usual trolling posts. You stuck up for your team openly and honestly. I respect that. I also happen to agree with much of what you wrote.

 

[jmt57]

Just my opinion, but the NFL has hinted about going international for a few years now. Buffalo to Toronto, this deal is the start of a painless transition. San Diego will end up in Mexico City once the Chargers stop making the playoffs; the local newspapers and radio stations there pay more attention to LA teams and a very good SD team struggles to sell out. That leaves LA as a market needing to be filled, and either the Vikings or Jaguars would be a most likely team to move.

Once that happens three teams will have moved, and NFL teams will be able to continue to threaten to move if they don't get the stadium deals and tax breaks they want. One city caves, and that agreement is then held up by the next team as the standard.

 

[upstater1]

Ralph Wilson is old and when he passes on, I think the family sells the team and the new owners will move to where they get the best deal. And with the NFL wanting a franchise in LA, that will be the place offering the most bucks.

As for the so-called Buffalo fan base, they don't go to the games in Buffalo, so why would they trek into Canada? Every home game last season, some business in Buffalo had to buy 2000 tickets to avoid the TV blackout rule. Most Buffalo fans who huff and puff about how great the fan base in Buffalo supports the team, leave outside of Western NY and never go to a game themselves, being content to watch it on Direct TV.

Toronto is simply a stop gap measure for Wilson to make some money, and as it was pointed out in another post, not to put into the team but to put into his pocket. I doubt new ownership would seriously consider moving the team there when greener pastures beckon.

Ah, this is just pure crap.

The stadium gets 75,000 fans, more than most stadiums. The Bills sell out every game except the late season December ones when the weather is frigid. At that point, they only get 73,000 instead of 75,000. If you look at attendance each year, the Bills are in the top 10 in tickets sold.

Really, this is just a losing argument. The Bills have great fan support.

That's not the problem. The problem is lack of luxury box revenues.

 

[upstater1]

The operating revenue comparison makes me dizzy. I don't get it. Why would they compare the payment to operating revenue? The thing you have to compare it to is total revenues to salary cap. This amount goes toward total revenue, not operating revenue. The Bills have to pay their players out of that $9.5 million. Are people that braindead that they can't do numbers anymore?

Let's see here: $9.75 million a game x 16 games is $156 million total revenues if every game were in Toronto.

So, is that really more than the Bills make in Buffalo? Hard to believe when you consider their total revenues in 2006 were $176 million. With revs rising at 10% each year (as the cap has) that would put 2008 revenues at $212 million. Let's say that Bills revs rise slower than that while the league pitches in a higher amount (but we can't assume that is true because Wilson wasn't complaining about the revenue picture now but only in the future when Buffalo will be maxed out and unable to maintain operating revenues relative to the cap. Wilson said the Bills are not maxed out yet but will be by the end of the current CBA). So, conservatively, let's say the Bills pull in $200 million in revenues each year. Hmmm, at Buffalo, they only pull in about $6 to 7 million per game.

So, where is the extra money coming from? TV revenues? 32 teams split $1.25 billion a year. That's $40 million right there. Say another $5 million off selling the rights to NFL signatures for properties, etc.

$45 million from TV, etc.
$110 from tickets, parking, concessions...
$5 million from the taxpayers in Buffalo

How much does the league chip into Buffalo then?

A whopping $40 million, it looks like.

With this Toronto million, that's an extra $3 million, potentially more if people buy luxury boxes, could be another $1 million. Sell the rights to the name of the stadium, another $500k there.

Now you've maxed out revs in Buffalo at $204.5 million.

So, back to Toronto.

Can Toronto beat that current Buffalo number without relying on the league's $40 million?

I have my doubts.

Capacity for football at the Rogers Centre is 50,000 seats.

So, 50,000 at $100 a pop = $5 million.
Add in concessions, parking, luxury boxes, and you begin to realize that the Rogers people may actually be taking a bath by giving the Bills almost $10 million per.

Now, a new nightmare: what happens when the Canadian dollar traditionally falls to .75 of the US dollar as it has in the past.

Suddenly, your total revenues don't look so good, and suddenly you have a Toronto Raptors situation on your hand.

Buffalo fans won't travel to Toronto (too much traffic, border problems with passports, people will be pissed off), but Toronto is a megalopolis so they won't have trouble selling tickets. But still, they'll have to raise the price of tix if the Canadian dollar ever drops.

 

[Afterlifemobile-86]

i lived in Toronto as well and that's not how I remember their fans. And, the punter story sounds like it could have come from one of the more pathetic teams the Patriots put on the field during the pre-Kraft years.

Well, then all i can tell you is time's have changed. My brother used to work at a bar and grill (Mid to late 90's). He'd always tell me that it was flooded with Bills fans come Sunday.

 

[MarvLevy]

Ralph Wilson is old and when he passes on, I think the family sells the team and the new owners will move to where they get the best deal. And with the NFL wanting a franchise in LA, that will be the place offering the most bucks.

As for the so-called Buffalo fan base, they don't go to the games in Buffalo, so why would they trek into Canada? Every home game last season, some business in Buffalo had to buy 2000 tickets to avoid the TV blackout rule. Most Buffalo fans who huff and puff about how great the fan base in Buffalo supports the team, leave outside of Western NY and never go to a game themselves, being content to watch it on Direct TV.

Toronto is simply a stop gap measure for Wilson to make some money, and as it was pointed out in another post, not to put into the team but to put into his pocket. I doubt new ownership would seriously consider moving the team there when greener pastures beckon.

You have no idea what you are even saying. Please stop passing off stupid asumptions around as fact. The only game that didn't sell out on it's own was the Miami game. Funny that our so-called dying area manages to fill a stadium that is bigger than a team who's fanbase is an entire region.

I find it ironic that one of the worst fanbases 20 years ago wants to take shots at the best. Yeah, the Bills suck. But the fan are still as die hard as they come. Funny thing is, most Pats fans I have meet seem like good fans. You just seem like a prick, who some how feels more important because in 2001, you started rooting a team that has had a great run. I hate fans like you.

 

[MarvLevy]

Well, then all i can tell you is time's have changed. My brother used to work at a bar and grill (Mid to late 90's). He'd always tell me that it was flooded with Bills fans come Sunday.

Go to the Harp in Beantown on Sunday.

Honestly, it's pathetic that as a fan, you even have to talk about this. You can't even tailgate in Canada. It's against the law. The fact that cities like Cleveland and Buffalo even have to think about losing their teams just symbolize how much this country has lost its roots. LA definitely deserves a third chance to lose a team.

 

[upstater1]

You have no idea what you are even saying. Please stop passing off stupid asumptions around as fact. The only game that didn't sell out on it's own was the Miami game. Funny that our so-called dying area manages to fill a stadium that is bigger than a team who's fanbase is an entire region.

I find it ironic that one of the worst fanbases 20 years ago wants to take shots at the best. Yeah, the Bills suck. But the fan are still as die hard as they come. Funny thing is, most Pats fans I have meet seem like good fans. You just seem like a prick, who some how feels more important because in 2001, you started rooting a team that has had a great run. I hate fans like you.

Why were the Patriots the worst 20 years ago?

20 years ago it was 1988 and the stadium was filling up routinely. We were in the playoffs in those Raymond Berry years.

 

[upstater1]

Go to the Harp in Beantown on Sunday.

Honestly, it's pathetic that as a fan, you even have to talk about this. You can't even tailgate in Canada. It's against the law. The fact that cities like Cleveland and Buffalo even have to think about losing their teams just symbolize how much this country has lost its roots. LA definitely deserves a third chance to lose a team.

Well, your owner isn't helping you any. He's a horrible person.

All ego.

Bought the team for basically nothing. Made $800 million, and instead of giving back to the community by selling locally, he's hoarding all that money for himself and his family. He's such an egotist that he won't even sell the stadium name rights, and he forgets that the taxpayers of Erie County also help to fund his enterprise.

I could understand trying to maximize your profit if you paid say $200 million for the club, but Wilson bought it for peanuts.

It's disgusting.

There are local buyers, but they are not going to compete with LA's billions when the team goes to market.

 

[FootballFanetic]

Well, your owner isn't helping you any. He's a horrible person.

All ego.

Bought the team for basically nothing. Made $800 million, and instead of giving back to the community by selling locally, he's hoarding all that money for himself and his family. He's such an egotist that he won't even sell the stadium name rights, and he forgets that the taxpayers of Erie County also help to fund his enterprise.

I could understand trying to maximize your profit if you paid say $200 million for the club, but Wilson bought it for peanuts.

It's disgusting.

There are local buyers, but they are not going to compete with LA's billions when the team goes to market.

You know not of what you speak. See my post above re: Ralph Wilson and his turning his back knowingly on moving the team to LA where he could have made much more money. I heard this from the man himself and his actions (including saying he won't move the team when he's alive) speak just as loudly. While Ralph take a lot of heat for this, his affairs with his family are his own business--I'd wish he'd consider the community in the mix as well, but that's up to him.

You take one well-publicized fact (that he hasn't sold the naming rights, no doubt) and spin a bunch of baseless assumptions out of it, which are all wrong. On the naming rights point, in an area like Buffalo and for a one-use stadium, you are not going to get anywhere near the kind of coin you get in larger cities with larger corporate communities, despite what Jerry Jones says.

In terms of Wilson being "disgusting" for building his team up from nothing (and helping the League grow up with it), I'd take that any day over today's "modern" owner, including yours, who seem to value dollars above all else and who sometimes (like the NFL Network fiasco, headlined by none other than your Mr. Kraft and Mr. Jones) don't even manage to do that right (their take on the CBA another data point on that one). Perhaps Ralph could have done it the way I believe Bob did--marry the money.....

 

[T-Bone]

To the two Bills Trolls who questioned my post: All I know was whenever I visited a Bills site this past season, the big concern was, are we going to have a tv backout because of poor ticket sales. And then right at the deadline some local business bought tickets to prevent that from happening.

Now I know the posts on the internet are forgotten as soon as they are written, but let me make this clear. Sellouts at Wilson Stadium are not due to the Bills fanbase, they occur because great fans like the Patriots have travel to the crapyard that is Buffalo to support their team and due to local businesses buying up hundreds if not thousands of unsold tickets.

The great Bills fanbase is a myth created by Bills Fan Trolls who live on the internet.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

You have no idea what you are even saying. Please stop passing off stupid asumptions around as fact. The only game that didn't sell out on it's own was the Miami game. Funny that our so-called dying area manages to fill a stadium that is bigger than a team who's fanbase is an entire region.

I find it ironic that one of the worst fanbases 20 years ago wants to take shots at the best. Yeah, the Bills suck. But the fan are still as die hard as they come. Funny thing is, most Pats fans I have meet seem like good fans. You just seem like a prick, who some how feels more important because in 2001, you started rooting a team that has had a great run. I hate fans like you.

Don't be so smug about the Bills.
Don't look now, but Belichick and the Patriots are mounting a serious challenge to the Bills' SuperBowl record!

 

[upstater1]

You know not of what you speak. See my post above re: Ralph Wilson and his turning his back knowingly on moving the team to LA where he could have made much more money. I heard this from the man himself and his actions (including saying he won't move the team when he's alive) speak just as loudly. While Ralph take a lot of heat for this, his affairs with his family are his own business--I'd wish he'd consider the community in the mix as well, but that's up to him.

You take one well-publicized fact (that he hasn't sold the naming rights, no doubt) and spin a bunch of baseless assumptions out of it, which are all wrong. On the naming rights point, in an area like Buffalo and for a one-use stadium, you are not going to get anywhere near the kind of coin you get in larger cities with larger corporate communities, despite what Jerry Jones says.

In terms of Wilson being "disgusting" for building his team up from nothing (and helping the League grow up with it), I'd take that any day over today's "modern" owner, including yours, who seem to value dollars above all else and who sometimes (like the NFL Network fiasco, headlined by none other than your Mr. Kraft and Mr. Jones) don't even manage to do that right (their take on the CBA another data point on that one). Perhaps Ralph could have done it the way I believe Bob did--marry the money.....

All your points are so refutable. You spoke to Wilson, so what? What happened to Al Davis when he tried to move to LA? He became a pariah. You think NFL owners will give up LA without a franchise fee? No way. That's a pipe dream.

The naming rights aren't for the Buffalo area. They're for a NATIONAL TV audience. For instance, Dallas at Buffalo on a Monday night. What's that worth. What's ALLTEL to Jacksonville? What about Cincy's stadium. Please!

You credit Wilson TOO MUCH for building it. The NFL old coots are lucky to have been where they are. They literally fell into youn know what, they struck a big oil well, they got lucky. Do the freakin' math again. A tiny investment grows by 1 million % in 40 years. No amount of hard work will yield that. The community is at least as important.

And yet Wilson is a greedhead.

You act like I'm the only one say it. Read the Buffalo News once in a while. Donn Esmonde has made this point repeatedly as have the regular beat writers.

As for Kraft, he built the stadium with his own money and went into hock for it, never took a dime from the taxpaying public, a taxpaying public that could have easily afforded it. Wilson, on the other hand, sucks the money right out of the poor taxpayers of Erie County, and then he gives them the middle finger.

He's an egotist.

I know more about the situation than you think, and after looking at how the man has made millions in profit on the team over 40 years, and now owns an entity that has INCREASED in value $800 million, I'd say he owes it to Buffalo fans to sell locally. But the fans such as yourself are so beaten down by Buffalo's woes that you still defend a guy that's about to sell the team down the river.

 

[upstater1]

To the two Bills Trolls who questioned my post: All I know was whenever I visited a Bills site this past season, the big concern was, are we going to have a tv backout because of poor ticket sales. And then right at the deadline some local business bought tickets to prevent that from happening.

Now I know the posts on the internet are forgotten as soon as they are written, but let me make this clear. Sellouts at Wilson Stadium are not due to the Bills fanbase, they occur because great fans like the Patriots have travel to the crapyard that is Buffalo to support their team and due to local businesses buying up hundreds if not thousands of unsold tickets.

The great Bills fanbase is a myth created by Bills Fan Trolls who live on the internet.

If you read this board with any regularity you'd realize I'm a Patriot fan.

You actually take anecdotal info from dropping by the Bills message board once and generalize, and then we're supposed to take what you say seriously?

Yep, people are flocking to Buffalo from all parts of the country to watch NFL football against the Bills.

Yep.

 

[T-Bone]

Yep, people are flocking to Buffalo from all parts of the country to watch NFL football against the Bills.



Sure they do, it is an easy win for their team, they get to go to Toronto or Niagra (sic) Falls for sightseeing, and the tickets are plentiful and cheap.

This season, pop over to any Bills board on a Thursday, and you will see plenty of posts about whiether the game will be on tv or not. Then someone will post a link about some business buying up tickets. It is like clockwork chief, any Thursday before a home game.

And attendence is determined by tickets sold, not bodies in seats.

 

[dryheat44]

Here's what hasn't been said: By the time Ralph Wilson departs, the Canadian dollar could be worth $1.20 or so US. Not only do I think that Toronto (or suburb) gets the Bills, I think it's entirely possible some Oilman in Calgary decides to buy a team as well and move another team north of the border, somewhere between Calgary and Edmonton (The Alberta Vikings?). This will likely please Goodell and the other 30 owners.

 

[bpeter17]

Sure they do, it is an easy win for their team, they get to go to Toronto or Niagra (sic) Falls for sightseeing, and the tickets are plentiful and cheap.

This season, pop over to any Bills board on a Thursday, and you will see plenty of posts about whiether the game will be on tv or not. Then someone will post a link about some business buying up tickets. It is like clockwork chief, any Thursday before a home game.

And attendence is determined by tickets sold, not bodies in seats.

would you like to make a wager on that one? Maybe a nice big donation to the jimmy fund? The bills will sell out every game this year at least one week ahead of time, with no help of a local business.

put your money where your mouth is if you are so sure, because I'm positive you are way off base on this one.

Of course, RWS isn't filled with 10,000 pink tom brady jerseys, corporate fans sitting on their hands or people who couldn't spell patriots before 1995...

as for my $.02 on the toronto thing - the NFL doesn't want the bills to leave. It was bad when it happened in cleveland, and would be worse in Buffalo. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 50/50 split schedule in 5 years with the bils still based in buffalo.

 

[The Sarge]

The word around Toronto is the ticket prices will average $200. Unless you are an Argonaut or Bills season ticket holder you have to go into a lottery to get tickets. Its almost impossible to get Maple Leaf tickets even though the prices average around $150 and triple that for playoff games.

 

[upstater1]

Yep, people are flocking to Buffalo from all parts of the country to watch NFL football against the Bills.

Sure they do, it is an easy win for their team, they get to go to Toronto or Niagra (sic) Falls for sightseeing, and the tickets are plentiful and cheap.

This season, pop over to any Bills board on a Thursday, and you will see plenty of posts about whiether the game will be on tv or not. Then someone will post a link about some business buying up tickets. It is like clockwork chief, any Thursday before a home game.

And attendence is determined by tickets sold, not bodies in seats.

I live here. I go to games. I see the stadium filled. 70,000 plus seats.

The Bills are top 10 in attendance.

Again, you guys think they don't get fans and they are in the top 10!