Buffalo Bills to get a new stadium

It will as long as people in Green Bay are willing to buy that pseudo-stock to fund the Packers’ requirements.

Yes, GB is a unique situation they league will never allow again. They get great attendance and are popular enough that they’re also a national team, but the population isn’t there to get good TV ratings if they had a few down years in a row. It just hasn’t happened in a while.

It might be about to. Rodgers threw his temper tantrum, then stayed, likely knowing he was about to lose his offensive coordinator, best receiver, and one of his OL. He got the $$, but the wins may be about to decline.

I remember the 1970s and 1980s and through 1991 when Green Bay was the Siberia of the NFL. Nobody wanted to play there and teams would threaten to trade players to Green Bay if they made trouble. The Packers were just as lousy on the field as off it. However, the Packers still had sell-outs locally and the NFL did quite well nationally with its television ratings.

If the Packers were to go into the tank and were no longer as much of a television draw, the NFL and the television networks would treat them like they do franchises like the Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars today - a lot less national broadcasts and a lot more lower-tier regional broadcasts. The NFL television ratings overall would not be affected.

That is one good thing about the NFL compared to other professional sports leagues. The overall product is so good league-wide that the ratings do not depend on the size of the markets of some of its franchises. As an example, the ratings for a Super Bowl between the Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers would be as high as for a Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and New York Jets. The NFL and the television networks do not care which teams qualify for the Super Bowl. Conversely, with Major League Baseball and its television networks would strongly prefer a World Series with the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers over one with the Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays.

True. Most of the money comes from TV revenues. The Chiefs could have a stadium in the middle of Nebraska, and aside from a lack of sellouts, the team wouldn’t know the difference.

SB ratings are down recently. High was 114M viewers; only one of the last four has hit 100M.

Of course, the pandemic would have impacted the last two.

The point is the Super Bowl’s ratings do not depend on which teams are playing in it. It will get strong ratings regardless. The NFL and its television networks do not worry how the qualifying Super Bowl teams will affect the ratings. Other professional sports leagues do not have that luxury.

As another example, way back in the 1980s I remember reading a column in The Hockey News where the columnist said the NHL’s dream Stanley Cup Final was the New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs (which was possible under the alignment at that time) while its nightmare final was the Winnipeg Jets and the Hartford Whalers. This had nothing to do with the strengths of the teams but rather the markets.

How does Fenway park do it than?

Why don’t the Bills just move to Toronto or Montreal or San Antonio or Columbus? These are decent sized markets not run by another team.

The Seahawks should go to Vancouver

I have no idea about the specifics on Fenway Park. I stated the reasons it is not viable for the Bills’ current stadium.

MOstly because the Canadian Football League already exists.

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You know that area way better than I do, but I would guess that the Chiefs have a lot of fans on the Kansas side. I would think that rooting for the Chiefs would be one thing that could bridge that divide. Am I off base?

And, putting aside the animosity issue, I doubt that the team moving across the state line would be such a big deal for most fans. The two “New York” teams have played in New Jersey for a long time and seem to be doing fine.

Also, your article goes to my question earlier about how Kansas City fans would react if the Chiefs were to threaten to leave if they didn’t get a new stadium. It is very easy to say that no public money should be spent and that the billionaire owner needs to spend more. It can be a lot more difficult to actually stick to that position and watch the team leave. Some cities have stronger backbones than others.

To add to this, I think it is very easy for fans to talk about how the billionaire owners should spend their money. Going back to the Bills, from what I read the Pegula’s actually did a pretty good job of keeping the costs down by favoring Orchard Park and an open air stadium. Some people wanted the stadium to be built in Downtown Buffalo, but for many reasons that was not going to happen. Still, as one example, I read one comment to an article where the poster said they should put the stadium downtown and the public only fund a maximum of half of the cost. For context, the estimated costs were $1.4 billion in Orchard Park vs. $2.5 billion downtown, meaning an additional $1.1 billion in costs. Now, I admit to not being an expert on NFL economics, but I don’t see how putting the stadium downtown would increase the Bills’ revenues, and certainly not by the annual cost of that difference.

If I had been the Bills and the NFL, and politicians had really pushed for the Downtown site, I would have told them fine, put the stadium where you want it, but don’t expect us to cover any part of the difference. To this fan, though, it was easy to say put the stadium downtown and have Pegula and the NFL pay 50% of it.

If you really believe this, you have totally lost it.

KC, I have no idea what just happened here. I was trying to reply to your post and quote part of it, and somehow my reply ended up overwriting your original post and showing you as having made my comments.

To make your post complete again, here is the link that you gave originally and which I somehow managed to delete:

And, Vancouver is actually smaller than Seattle so that example makes no sense. And, they can pull those fans in anyway.

Seattle has already built a very expensive stadium and the Seahawks are doing very well in Seattle. Talking about the team leaving now is asinine.

And they already have a pro football team - the B.C. Lions.

A bit less well now that we have their QB.

I was referring to off the field. There is no shortage of people wanting to buy Seahawks tickets.

Everything is going well in Seattle with the franchise business-wise. Talking about moving the team to Vancouver makes no sense whatsoever.

Yes

This animosity dates back to the civil war. IT would not play well at all if the Chiefs moved across the state line. But that’s not an issue since none of the local governments would pony up that much for a football team.

And I am not sure what happened, but it burped a little in my response to you.

Many wonder how Canada would react if the NFL wanted to put a team there. Some there worry that an NFL team there could lead to the demise of the CFL.

Going on memory, the World Football League wanted to put a team in Toronto when it was first founded. The Canadian government was worried about how that would affect the CFL and started enacting legislation which would have prevented a foreign football league from entering Canada. The WFL got the message and abandoned that plan, so the legislation did not go forward. However, that was in response to an upstart league whose prospects were questionable at best. The NFL is a totally different animal, and nobody knows if Canada would try to keep the NFL out.

Also, as I understand now, there are no stadiums in Canada that meet the NFL’s minimum stadium requirements.

I have also talked about how the Bills played one regular season game in Toronto from 2008 - 2013. That was an unmitigated failure. However, that was due to how that was implemented and should not be viewed as reflective of the potential of the Canadian market for an NFL franchise.