l< j Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Peter King says no one is moving to LA soon, per league requirements. A team wanting to move will have to demonstrate 3 things: market failure in current market; a new stadium deal in place; and an interim stadium deal for 2013. No one is close to meeting these requirements. The league wants an orderly evacuation from whichever city wants to flee. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nfl/news/20121217/week-15/?sct=uk_t11_a3 kj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PromoTheRobot Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 So a team that leaves a city must demonstrate market failure. Stay away from Bills games and we make sure the team is gone. PTR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Storm Front Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 The NFL is such a powerful machine. It is awful the way the NFL hangs a move to LA over the heads of teams and fans in small markets. In most industries this would be called extortion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwight in philly Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 So a team that leaves a city must demonstrate market failure. Stay away from Bills games and we make sure the team is gone. PTR it is the basic catch -22 for sure, but the nonsense that the fan base in buffalo has to put up with is inexcusable!, what is the answer? just continue to be a laughingstock? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillnutinHouston Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Stay away from Bills games and we make sure the team is gone. PTR Yes, can't wait to "enjoy" another year of scintillating Bills football in 2013. I spend those 1,500 mile plane rides to the games just basking in the glow of our dominance. I consider myself an above average Bills suporter but it's getting tough. I believe I am supporting the "idea" of the NFL in Buffalo more than I'm supporting the actual players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PromoTheRobot Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 it is the basic catch -22 for sure, but the nonsense that the fan base in buffalo has to put up with is inexcusable!, what is the answer? just continue to be a laughingstock? Sadly yes. Because the NFL will look for any reason to yank the Bills. It sucks but showing up for games is the best defense. PTR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwight in philly Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 (edited) Sadly yes. Because the NFL will look for any reason to yank the Bills. It sucks but showing up for games is the best defense. PTR i honestly believe that, and that fact is maddening. the NFL has changed dramatically since i was a kid going to the rockpile and that change has obviously been for the worse. Edited December 17, 2012 by dwight in philly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattsox Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Peter King says no one is moving to LA soon, per league requirements. A team wanting to move will have to demonstrate 3 things: market failure in current market; a new stadium deal in place; and an interim stadium deal for 2013. No one is close to meeting these requirements. The league wants an orderly evacuation from whichever city wants to flee. http://sportsillustr.../?sct=uk_t11_a3 kj Dangit! That means I have to deal with this crap for another year. ARGHHH!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnC Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Sadly yes. Because the NFL will look for any reason to yank the Bills. It sucks but showing up for games is the best defense. PTR The league has little say as to whether a team will be relocated or not. Al Davis proved that the law is on the side of the owner who wants to move a franchise. Even given that most owners for their own sake don't want the league to deny them the ability to do what they want to do with their own franchise. The issue about relocating or not comes down to whoever wins the bid for the franchise and whether the new owner wants to relocate or not. Ralph Wilson has badly diminished the market in western NY because of his long standing garbage product. Fans are foolish if they go to the games primarily because they fear a lack of support will make the team more likely to be moved. That is an ownership and organizational con job. Whether the team stays or not will be determined by the group buying the team with the highest bid. The only thing the absentee owner cares about is maximizing the sale of his biggest asset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. WEO Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 The NFL is such a powerful machine. It is awful the way the NFL hangs a move to LA over the heads of teams and fans in small markets. In most industries this would be called extortion. Sadly yes. Because the NFL will look for any reason to yank the Bills. It sucks but showing up for games is the best defense. PTR The NFL is not going to "yank" any teams anywhere. And small market teams such as the Bills and GB are making a ton of profit and have been for years. The "league" isn't holding anything over anyone. Owners move or don't move. LA has no stadium. No one will move there unless they want to part with a significant chunk of their team ownership. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zonabb Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 The NFL is not going to "yank" any teams anywhere. And small market teams such as the Bills and GB are making a ton of profit and have been for years. They're only profitable because they lack debt service. As soon as an owner has to plop down a note to buy the team, that profit goes away. And with no profit possible, no one in their right mind would keep the team here when simply changing the address means profit. Simply, this small market model only works when the team is debt free with a longstanding owner or is "community" owned and can sell pieces of paper fraudlently referred to as stock for a lot of money to raise needed capital. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dean Cain Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 The Bills need to improve their experiment north of the border. The Bills are the NFL's smallest tv market outside of Jacksonville & Green Bay. If you include Toronto the Bills are a top 5 market. The problem with the Bills is that Toronto is indifferent towards them. In a city of 6,500,000 million the Bills can't even get 40,000 fans in a 54,000 seat stadium. We've had 5 years to build this thing in Toronto and other than it being a financial boon, it has been an abject failure. Only a Bush League franchise could blow the Toronto series. How about this - do the training camp in Toronto? Rochester is a middling city and brings in only 15,000 fans on Sunday. If you integrate the Bills in Toronto or Southern Ontario they would be around longer than one weekend per year to showcase the NFL to the Canadian market. If the Bills truly believe Canada is the Bills best chance at remaining viable then they need to pull the plug on Rochester & relocate training camp to Ontario. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TSNBDSC Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 ... the Bills are not going anywhere ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMadCap Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 The Bills need to improve their experiment north of the border. The Bills are the NFL's smallest tv market outside of Jacksonville & Green Bay. If you include Toronto the Bills are a top 5 market. The problem with the Bills is that Toronto is indifferent towards them. In a city of 6,500,000 million the Bills can't even get 40,000 fans in a 54,000 seat stadium. We've had 5 years to build this thing in Toronto and other than it being a financial boon, it has been an abject failure. Only a Bush League franchise could blow the Toronto series. How about this - do the training camp in Toronto? Rochester is a middling city and brings in only 15,000 fans on Sunday. If you integrate the Bills in Toronto or Southern Ontario they would be around longer than one weekend per year to showcase the NFL to the Canadian market. If the Bills truly believe Canada is the Bills best chance at remaining viable then they need to pull the plug on Rochester & relocate training camp to Ontario. A winning team will go a long, long way towards correcting that issue... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8-8 Forever? Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 Peter King says no one is moving to LA soon, per league requirements. A team wanting to move will have to demonstrate 3 things: market failure in current market; a new stadium deal in place; and an interim stadium deal for 2013. No one is close to meeting these requirements. The league wants an orderly evacuation from whichever city wants to flee. http://sportsillustr.../?sct=uk_t11_a3 kj The criteria for "market success" will be interesting to see. Lowest ticket price in the league, empty or cut rate luxury box rentals, bottom 5 merchandise sales, zero TV ratings and fan interest outside of WNY, I'd argue that is market failure of the highest order if I was a prospective buyer with $800million on the table to buy and move a team in a national and hopefully international league. Full stadiums of people paying $40/tkt don't mean much in the grand scheme of NFL team economics. Agree, full stadiums are good for show, but the NFL is a revenue sharing league, and Bills franchise is a drag on the growth of the shared revenue and WNY is death to the non-shared revenue in any sober analysis. Hopefully the "fix is in" upon Ralph's death and he didn't really mean " sold to the highest bidder". Plus the Jerry Jones' of the NFL will be 100% behind moving the franchise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Storm Front Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 The sad thing is that the fans in LA have never been all that interested in pro football. They're no t much better than the fans inJacksonville Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HalftimeAdjustment Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 The criteria for "market success" will be interesting to see. Lowest ticket price in the league, empty or cut rate luxury box rentals, bottom 5 merchandise sales, zero TV ratings and fan interest outside of WNY, I'd argue that is market failure of the highest order if I was a prospective buyer with $800million on the table to buy and move a team in a national and hopefully international league. Full stadiums of people paying $40/tkt don't mean much in the grand scheme of NFL team economics. Agree, full stadiums are good for show, but the NFL is a revenue sharing league, and Bills franchise is a drag on the growth of the shared revenue and WNY is death to the non-shared revenue in any sober analysis. Hopefully the "fix is in" upon Ralph's death and he didn't really mean " sold to the highest bidder". Plus the Jerry Jones' of the NFL will be 100% behind moving the franchise. By this rationale, shouldn't they move the team with the lowest revenue in the league (assuming that it is not expected to grow over time)? This article says the Bills had the 2nd lowest (not the lowest) ticket price and the 30th (not 32nd) most revenue. If they are 30th in revenue, why not move the 31st and 32nd ranked teams first? http://blogs.buffalonews.com/press-coverage/2012/09/forbes-ranks-bills-29th-most-valuable-nfl-club.html If the team valuations are to be believed, it has increased in value by about 75% from 2002-2012. While that is not a phenomenal return, when coupled with an EBITDA of $30M/yr it is not completely unviable either. It is not at all clear what will happen either way in the short term. However, over the medium term... no new stadium, no Bills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. WEO Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 The NFL is not going to "yank" any teams anywhere. And small market teams such as the Bills and GB are making a ton of profit and have been for years. They're only profitable because they lack debt service. As soon as an owner has to plop down a note to buy the team, that profit goes away. And with no profit possible, no one in their right mind would keep the team here when simply changing the address means profit. Simply, this small market model only works when the team is debt free with a longstanding owner or is "community" owned and can sell pieces of paper fraudlently referred to as stock for a lot of money to raise needed capital. You left out the part where any new owner of any team anywhere will have debt in the form of his purchace financing. In Buffalo, the new owner would step into a franchise with very low overhead and a 20-40 million margin every year to pay down the debt---and that is at the Bills current crappiness and low ticket prices. Get a competent owner and create a winning team, revenues will increase. It would be far more expensive for a new owner to relocate to LA than to stay in Buffalo. First, the cost of relocation. Next, he would have to surrender a significant chunk of the team ownership (and profits) to the builder of the LA stadium (a contingency demanded by the stadium builder before it's built). Then there is the huge rent he will have to pay to play in the new stadium. And of course the cost of all of those empty seats in the LA stadium... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homey D. Clown Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 (edited) ... the Bills are not going anywhere ... WHEW!!! I'm glad you said that, I was beginning to worry. For the realists, the Bills have a weak stadium plan long term, a 94 YO owner hell bent on making sure there is no succession plan, a marketing douche-bag still fostering the Toronto abomination, and the fact that even toronto papers are now leaking the fact that the rogers group were in fact trying like hell to milk the team from the old man. http://www.torontosu...t-for-the-bills Add in the small market, the miserable economy, declining profits, Blah, Blah, blah... Again, anyone who thinks this team is not in dire jeopardy of moving is seriously delusional. Edited December 18, 2012 by McKinleys Curse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALF Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 A lot of billionaries out there who could pay cash and enjoy the game without a profit . Pegula did that for the Sabres. Just wishful thinking. Goodell is from Jamestown and would prefer the bills stay here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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