Roger Goodell is from upstate new York (goodells father is a former US senator rep. new York state and rogers mom is from Buffalo) along side a lot of powerful US senators who would love to see their home town bills stay in Buffalo with our without Ralph Wilson (god bless) and the help of Jim Kelly (god speed).
Bills will be in Buffalo for a long time to come, just my opinion.
The team will be put in trust and no sale is likely to happen for about 1.5 or 2 years. There is a $400 million dollar penalty for breaking the lease that runs to 2023 at The Ralph - but there is a one time buy out period for less than $29 million for a brief period after the 2019 season.
So barring somebody with VERY deep pockets the Bills will stay in Buffalo through at least 2019 in my opinion.
What happens after that who knows. Some media reports have the Sabres owner possibly bying them to keep them in Buffalo. Other reports say Los Angeles or Toronto are the most likely destinations. I've read articles explaining why LA makes more sense. I've seen others like this from The Star beating the Bon Jovi Toronto drum again.
I really wish people would stop flogging this dead horse!! The Bills are not coming to Toronto people!! The NFL saw the writing on the wall in the "Bills in Toronto" series. That was Toronto's "litmus" test and it failed miserably!! If and only if the Bills move, it will go to L.A., San Antonio, London, or Mexico City. The Toronto fiasco was an embarrassment to the NFL and they don't like to be embarrassed. Plus no government, neither local, provincial or federal, is going to spend over a Billion Dollars to build a 65,000 seat Stadium in Toronto!!! The NFL would not allow a team play in a 30,000 renovated BMO field with very few if any corperate boxes so forget that idea people. I wish their one media person in Toronto that would tell it like it really is, instead of continually shovelling this fantasy crap!!!
If MLSE or whomever in Toronto is really interested in the Bills, they are going to have to do it right with the Argos and at least Cathal Kelly seems to understand that.
MLSE IS “doing right” by the Argos. They have offered to reconfigure and upgrade BMO stadium to provide the Argos a modern place to play post Rogers Centre… and MLSE is paying for it!
This is an incredible “gift” to the Argos IMO and at least provides them an opportunity to try to remain viable in the GTA.
Toronto is near the top of the league in attendance for NHL, MLB, NBA and will be sold out for TFC games.
It will support an NFL team. You are kidding yourself if you believe otherwise.
Come on Drummer - how many cities with teams with records as bad as TFC's or the Jays over the last 7 and 20 years respectively would have attendance anywhere near what those two Toronto teams get - same for the Raptors (and Leafs). I'll tell you - almost certainly NONE! No city I can think of - that's for sure.
In their seven year existence TFC have average 19,912 per game (tickets sold. Only 3 teams have a higher average attendance over that time. (Were they getting thousands of no-shows every game the last few years with their brutal records yup, but still #4 in the MLS average over seven (terrible) seasons.
A false statement is a false statement.
Don’t try to fool people into believing the blue jays are among the league leaders in attendance when it’s not even close.
If the jays become a playoff team again, then perhaps. but right now, no way.
I agree it is not near the top - but it is amazingly good - be it 14th or 19th - for a team that has not had so much as a sniff at the post season for 20 years and were out of contention completely in August or earlier each season. And not that it really makes a difference but fyi - the figures Seymour looked at was for 2013 when the Jays were 14th in home attendance for that season at an average of 31,315 for their 81 home games, a total of 2,536,000.
And just sitting hear thinking of that number - and looking at numbers of other MLB teams in around the same numbers or higher - those really are amazing numbers for any team in any sport. We all consider a good Argos crowd when they get 25,000 and they only have 9 games to sell. Just think 31,000+ average for 81 home dates. To me that is kind of mind boggling.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance/_/year/2013
And I don't know if you have ever phrased it this way - so I'm not blaming you on this drummer - but numerous times on this thread I've read things like 'Toronto fans don't support anybody except the Leafs', or 'Toronto is a terrible sports town'. Comments like that are just simply NOT TRUE. Although an argument could be made if you were talking just about football in Toronto as of late. Maybe a move to BMO will change that. I hope so!