Ralph Wilson worried about Bills

[mikey]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_y...VDubYF?slug=ap-bills-wilson&prov=ap&type=lgns


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[Murphys95]

That's disappointing to here, but it doesn't surprise me. Buffalo as a city has been struggling economically. Still, they have a loyal fan base and a decent stadium. Unfortunately, their team doesn't seem to be headed in the right direction - success cures what ills pretty quickly.

 

[DarrylS]

Wonder if he is posturing to have this team moved to LA, not sure NY is gonna ante up for a new stadium..

 

[italian pat patriot]

i hope the Bills will be able to remain in BUF

i simply hate when the teams are mooving...

so i hope Mr Wilson will be able to keep them there

 

[Fumblerooski]

Too bad for Mr Wilson, but time marches on and waits for no one.

He should sell the franchise to a younger more energetic group who may be able to find ways to salvage the team for the Buf City folks. They have a rich heritage out West and deserve better.

Otherwise, the team will be sold and moved. Such is life in the NFL. Unfortunately, the business side of the NFL is cold hearted - for both the players and now owners in small markets. Even the few good men who founded the NFL like Wilson outlive the situation.

He should sell the team instead of going out whinning about and becoming a joke in the NFL. Marv Levy is not the solution to his woes. Sad.

 

[stinkypete]

It would be a shame. There's alot of history in Buffalo. Plus, I'd miss mopping the floor with the Bills twice a year.

 

[JoeSixPat]

If Ralph Wilson would simply check in at Patsfans every now and then he'd know that there's no way the Bills will ever move from NY - there's simply too much history.

 

[DB15]

I really hope they turn things around

 

[FreeTedWilliams]

Hey Ralph, how bout starting with selling the naming rights to "Ralph Wilson Stadium" to some corporation for a few million a year? It must stick in Kraft's craw, to hand money over to guys like Wilson and Brown who underutilize the money streams available to them.

Granted Buffalo is not the economic mecca of the world, but the fans have and will always fill he stadium. The Bills would be in a lot better shape if they had better football people running the show. They did have a great franchise in the early nineties, what happened to all that money? Obviously it was not re-invested into the team, (unlike what Bob "please buy the Bruins" Kraft) has done.

I have alot of frineds in Buffalo and spent a few years in upstate NY, and I would hate to see the Bills leave Buffalo. Maybe Wilson could sell the team to Chris Berman?

 

[Brady'sButtBoy]

Blah, Blah, Blah, just another ultra-rich guy preparing to finagle the tax-payers out of their hard earned money. He ought to be ashamed of himself.....

 

[Tunescribe]

That's disappointing to here, but it doesn't surprise me. Buffalo as a city has been struggling economically. Still, they have a loyal fan base and a decent stadium. Unfortunately, their team doesn't seem to be headed in the right direction - success cures what ills pretty quickly.

You ever been there? The stadium is kind of a relic.

 

[usmcmgb]

The Stadium IS a relic. And re-hiring an 80 year old guy from your glory years to run your team is not the way to re-vitalize it. But hey, I can muster a little sympathy for die hard Bills fans. Remember we had Orthwein looking to move the Pats to St. Louis before Kraft came riding out of the sunset to save the day.

 

[tailgater]

You really think any company is going to shell out 10MM+ for the naming rights? No way, for the same reason the team will be forced to move - Buffalo is a depressed area with few if any fortune 500 companies.

The funny thing is, the Dolphins just changed the name of their stadium to Dolphins Stadium - they had no luck selling naming rights to anybody. Even the prior name (Pro Player) was not paid for for years, with the parent company declaring bankruptcy in 1999.

If they can't in Miami, forget about Buffalo!

Hey Ralph, how bout starting with selling the naming rights to "Ralph Wilson Stadium" to some corporation for a few million a year? It must stick in Kraft's craw, to hand money over to guys like Wilson and Brown who underutilize the money streams available to them.

Granted Buffalo is not the economic mecca of the world, but the fans have and will always fill he stadium. The Bills would be in a lot better shape if they had better football people running the show. They did have a great franchise in the early nineties, what happened to all that money? Obviously it was not re-invested into the team, (unlike what Bob "please buy the Bruins" Kraft) has done.

I have alot of frineds in Buffalo and spent a few years in upstate NY, and I would hate to see the Bills leave Buffalo. Maybe Wilson could sell the team to Chris Berman?

 

[Murphys95]

You ever been there? The stadium is kind of a relic.

Yes, 4 consecutive years in fact. Frankly, it's my favorite stadium I've been to. I'm a fan of the older, less glitzy venues. Also, the tailgate environment is what Foxboro used to be like (which is to say pretty decent).

...plus it doesn't take 15 minutes to get up to the upper deck.

 

[AzPatsFan]

Bill's Stadium not a problem...

Yes, 4 consecutive years in fact. Frankly, it's my favorite stadium I've been to. I'm a fan of the older, less glitzy venues. Also, the tailgate environment is what Foxboro used to be like (which is to say pretty decent).

...plus it doesn't take 15 minutes to get up to the upper deck.

The day of the Stadium as a differentiator, by lux boxes, is dying, if not DEAD.

The new CBA drove the last nail into the coffin. There used to be a loophole that teams DID NOT SHARE revenue from lux boxes, so that drove teams to want a new stadium to get many more of them.

Under the new CBA that revenue is now shared, so there is little or no advantage any longer to maximum boxes. Buffalo's stadium was built on the pattern of Foxboro except fully expanded to a full bowl with lots of seats, around 80,000 and without being quite so chintzey. It was later renovated to create 164 lux boxes, a goodly number, and the seating capacity went down to only the mid 70,000s, a very competitive number.

Tommorrow, the Stadium differentiator wil be seating size, and that is where Gillette is difficient. Ggillette wa b uilt to optimize lux boxes and club seating, the stadium revenue differentiators at the time. It is now functionally obsolete.

The Pats play in the smallest Stadium in the AFCE, and one of the smaller ones in the NFL. I predict in a few years the Pats will be talking about expanding seating to increase revenue, just to stay "competitive" and it will not be lux boxes that will be added. Fortunately airy Gillette can be augmented with up to ten thousand more seats without major problems, although the "openess" will disappear, but the fan "noise" and "intensity " will probably increase.

I have never understood why Teams feel that fans won't sit for 8-10 football game season on a bleecher type seat. I would gladly do so for a reduction in price by say $25 dollars a ticketand $5-10 bucks on parking prices,about the increase in prices when a new Stadium is constructed. Maybe that observation is true for baseball with its 81 date schedule, but I seriously doubt even that.

Else how does the urine-soaked, stinky, cesspool that is ancient Fenway, sell out every game?

External revenue is an issue true, but winning cures that. People buy fan paraphenalia when the team is successful.

 

[upstater1]

The Stadium IS a relic. And re-hiring an 80 year old guy from your glory years to run your team is not the way to re-vitalize it. But hey, I can muster a little sympathy for die hard Bills fans. Remember we had Orthwein looking to move the Pats to St. Louis before Kraft came riding out of the sunset to save the day.

The stadium was just redone a few years ago. I think the stadium is great. When you get 80,000 fans in there, it's a wild place.

This is what Wilson is really complaining about: the new salary cap is eating away at his margin. He knows he's not going to live for very much longer, and that the franchise will be up for sale. Think like a businessman. When your margins are eroding, how much is your company worth? If you can only milk say $5-10 million in profit from the Bills, how much capital are you going to lay down? In the past, with a more manageable salary cap, the Bills could make more money every year. With the new CBA and cap, Wilson's franchise has taken a big hit in value. This is what it's about. Its not about the team's viability in Buffalo. I believe they are still very viable. It's about a loss of about $150 million to Wilson's pocketbook.

As for the area having no Fortune 500 companies, Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, a few others are still there, Xerox and IBM started there and still maintain a presence, and big but smaller companies like Delaware North and Delphi Auto are still hanging around. The area is depressed economically but it's underrated as well. Buffalo had to fall from a pretty high perch in the early part of the 20th century when it was THE place for a lot of American commerce. Electricity, the Erie Canal, the world expo in 1900 that lined up industries along the Niagara, made it the place to be. It started deteriorating in the 50s and 60s, and has gone into a freefall since then. But freefall for Buffalo means that all the incredible turn of the century mansions are going for $600-700k instead of $2-3 million that they should be going for. Not many cities in the US have this kind of infrastructure at all.