K D Posted June 25, 2014 Posted June 25, 2014 Without knowing the terms of the trust, this is a meaningless answer. Dear Family, Please devalue your inheritance by $100 million because thebandit27 says so. Signed, Ralph
RyanC883 Posted June 25, 2014 Posted June 25, 2014 I think you "get it" with this point. I think most people don't get it and operate under the illusion that the primary decision maker in all of this the individual team owner. Maybe this was true back in the hay day of George Halas, but it ain't your grandma's NFL anymore. The individual team owner long ago ceded control to the partnership of 32 teams which make up the NFL. They did this because they make more money as individuals by co-operating with each other than they would if they solely competed against each other in a traditional free market. Ralph himself contractually agreed to sell the team only to a buyer who can get the support of roughly 75% of their fellow owners. The fellow owners are also driven by what will make them the most $. They will get their 1/31st of whatever transfer payments come from the sale. This is a chunk of cash, but pales next to the true cash cow delivering $ to the Bills the TV networks. THIS WHY I DOUBT THE BILLS WILL EVER MOVE. What the NFL is really making the big $ from is selling a story. If the Bills move it certainly does give each team their 1/31st of the transfer fees, but if the team stays put, they get to sale a far better story of 40 years of NFL history which the Bills as an original AFL team are a big part of. Even worse, if the Bills leave the NFL story features 5+ years of the city and region dieing. Will the NFL take less $ for the team to stay put? Yes, because they make a lot more money by the team staying in Buffalo than messing up the story they are selling to the TV nets for a mere 1/31st of an increased transfer fee. This is well said. You don't want the NFL turning into the other sports leagues. Imagine the 'story' that can be sold when the Buffalo Bills win the SB! where do you come up with this concept of a meaningful "transfer fee" and teams getting 1/31st? Whatever the Bills sell for goes to the Wilson family and trust not the NFL. The point of my original post was that the NFL has an approval process, by-laws and ultimately an owner vote to saying who can buy the team. Whether they have any direct say over how much the team sells for is murky. The point of my original post they are not going to approve the "who" if that person is looking to buy at a price point that devalues the other teams in the league. I said years ago and I still believe the best hope that Buffalo has for retaining the team is built off it's connection to the Toronto and Southern Ontario market and the political fallout that may arise from moving the only true NY team out of NY. In the end I believe that Buffalo may dodge the bullet in the upcoming transaction though in the long term if the economic and population decline of Buffalo / WNY is not reversed that if the "new" owner sells at some number of years into the future the team will be moved. I would love the idea of Green Bay sort of public trust ownership but there is no way the billionaire owners club ever allows that to happen again. At the end of the day the NFL is a business built on TV and marketing revenue being in a small and declining market (without Southern Ontario being included in the mix) is not sustainable. This is also a good point. Hopefully Buffalo can reverse its decline, and tap into the Southern Ontario TV market. The population around Buffalo into Ontario and east to Syracuse is there to support the team. Just need to tap into it. Perhaps training camp in Southern Ontario (or practices) so fans up there can meet the players. A pre-season game in the Dome, etc. But all regular season events in Buffalo.
Mickey Posted June 25, 2014 Posted June 25, 2014 The trustees have a fiduciary duty to the trust beneficiaries so much depends on who the beneficiaries are. Presumably Ralph's wife and his children are but it is also likely that there are others such as grandchildren. The permutations of heirs who have an interest in the trustees maximizing the value of the trust are endless. A home town discount would lessen the value of the trust's best asset to the detriment of trust beneficiaries. In a world where money rules, I wouldn't bank on the goodwill of trustees to keep the team in Buffalo. As big as that penalty is for relocating the team within the next 5 years or so, what happens if an owner surfaces who is willing to pay that penalty and is the highest bidder for the franchise by far?
K-9 Posted June 25, 2014 Posted June 25, 2014 (edited) The trustees have a fiduciary duty to the trust beneficiaries so much depends on who the beneficiaries are. Presumably Ralph's wife and his children are but it is also likely that there are others such as grandchildren. The permutations of heirs who have an interest in the trustees maximizing the value of the trust are endless. A home town discount would lessen the value of the trust's best asset to the detriment of trust beneficiaries. In a world where money rules, I wouldn't bank on the goodwill of trustees to keep the team in Buffalo. As big as that penalty is for relocating the team within the next 5 years or so, what happens if an owner surfaces who is willing to pay that penalty and is the highest bidder for the franchise by far? If it were just about taking the highest bid, why set it up such that the winning bid needs a 3/4 approval by the four trustees that vote (Mary Wilson, Mary Owen, Jeff Littman, and a fourth guy I forget, but he's in charge of Mr. Wilson's philanthropic pursuits IIRC)? Why that layer of discretion? GO BILLS!!! Edited June 25, 2014 by K-9
SRQ_BillsFan Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 (edited) I don't think it's as simple as buying a house where the trust get paid $1 Billion in cash, but it may be. I would expect that two $1 Billiom dollar bids could be quite different. One may pay off current debt or a payment could be structured over a timeframe. Part of the offer could be stock instead of cash or include a $5 million dollar donation to charity in Ralph's name. $100,000,000 could be tied to the new owner getting a new stadium in 2-3 years. There could be all types of things that could make a higher "paper" bid less appealing. It may be as simple as not having the sale tied up in court for a long time while a party tries to move them, wink wink. . Edited June 26, 2014 by SRQ_BillsFan
Hplarrm Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 where do you come up with this concept of a meaningful "transfer fee" and teams getting 1/31st? Whatever the Bills sell for goes to the Wilson family and trust not the NFL. The point of my original post was that the NFL has an approval process, by-laws and ultimately an owner vote to saying who can buy the team. Whether they have any direct say over how much the team sells for is murky. The point of my original post they are not going to approve the "who" if that person is looking to buy at a price point that devalues the other teams in the league. I said years ago and I still believe the best hope that Buffalo has for retaining the team is built off it's connection to the Toronto and Southern Ontario market and the political fallout that may arise from moving the only true NY team out of NY. In the end I believe that Buffalo may dodge the bullet in the upcoming transaction though in the long term if the economic and population decline of Buffalo / WNY is not reversed that if the "new" owner sells at some number of years into the future the team will be moved. I would love the idea of Green Bay sort of public trust ownership but there is no way the billionaire owners club ever allows that to happen again. At the end of the day the NFL is a business built on TV and marketing revenue being in a small and declining market (without Southern Ontario being included in the mix) is not sustainable. My thinking is based on the assumption/conclusion from past behavior that the primary motivator for the NFL owners is what gives them the maximum profit. There are lots of motivators for any individual and clearly many past NFL owners have been strongly motivated by items such as their love for the game, wanting to be the baddest man in town, or whatever. However, I make the general assumption about people doing business (and we have seen this time and again in several examples of NL owner behavior) that the deciding motivator for them is SHOW ME THE MONEY. Do you or anyone disagree? Past examples of NFL owner behavior is that originally this was a fairly typical competitive business model with the individual teams clearly cooperating with each to form a league and develop schedules which did not disadvantage any one team. However, each owner was clearly an individual. This began to publicly change with Pete Rozelle taking over leading the league and it departed from traditional capitalist models (the winner gets the fruits and competition makes everyone better as they try to win), but Rozelle was able to lead the owners to realize that they could present a more entertaining product and thus make more money if they did stuff like hold a draft and actually reward the worst teams with the higher draft picks. The NFL embarked on a system which more and more was based on their own social compact of co-operation rather than traditional capitalist competition. The last great hallmark of the capitalist approach was the mid80s labor dispute with the players (led by AFL-CIO type Ed Garvey who led the players into a threat of a strike unless the owners agreed to give the players 53% of the gross receipts of the NFL in player salaries. It was clear they were going to strike after the regular season when the players had received their salaries which were paid on a per game basis. The NFL received much of its cash from the TV nets for playoff games and thus a post regular season during the playoff strike maximized NFLPA power. The team owners were successful businessman and outflanked the NFLPA by locking the players out early in the regular season and hiring replacement players (scabs in NFLPA terms) of college level and off the street athletic talent to play the games. Fans tolerated this and were actually entertained and quite curious for a few games. During these three games the players who did not have the money in hand they planned to have on their strike schedule simply buckled. However, in the face of this and the demise of the Garvey forces, a few of the talented tenth of NFL players like Gene Upshaw were in league with smart NYC attorneys and talked the players into threatening to simply get rid of the NFLPA unless the owners agreed to an agreement which came to be known at the CBA (Comprehensive Bargaining Agreement). The CBA established a salary cap that actually exceeded the Garvey demands in terms of contractually dedicating a majority of the total receipts to player salaries. The alternative which the NFLPA threatened the owners with was once the NFLPA disbanded the owners would be forced to actually operate economically in a free market. Things like the NFL draft were actually flat our restraints of trade and violated the rights of individual athletes. The courts would have upheld the right of the individual to sell their services to the highest bidder, but as labor law has developed the American system does allow the rights of the individual to be over ridden ONLY IF this happens as part of a certified trade union agreement. The NFLPA threatened to decertify itself unless the owners essentially recognized and paid the players as partners. The owners, terrified of actually having to compete against each other in a free market (individual players would need to be signed to personal services contracts and which ever man could attract the best players through high bids would have the best team) instead decided to agree to take the socialist way out and sign the CBA. The reward for doing this though was relative labor peace which gained the first billions of dollars in money from the TV networks. The owners did negotiate that CBA to have the salary cap set based on an agreed upon with the NFLPA salary cap from designated gross receipts. The owners then took advantage of this agreement to make moves like the one Ralph did of getting rid of thousands of the seats he had sold out for year because the receipts from them were part of the designated gross. Instead, he built luxury boxes he did not need under the CBA to share with players. Upshaw and others said fine to this move, but when the CBA came up for renegotiation in 7 years or so he dictated even before negotiations that the salary cap would now be dictated by total gross receipts and that the player share needed to be a percentage that started with a 6). Paul Tagliabue and the other spiritual sons of Pete Rozelle negotiated a deal which arguably not only made the players partners but the majority partners receiving 60.5% of the total gross receipts. Ralph and the Packers objected to the deal where these mere players claimed to equal to the owners. George Halas may have rolled over in his grave but the NFL team owners simply agreed to do without being majority partners, their manhood or whatever, because in the end the TV nets were gonna pay the owners more $ than most dreamed their NFL teams would ever produce. The final deal did tip its hat to Ralph (agreeing to a owner opportunity to force early renegotiation which they did and got some marginal improvements for owners) but also it reinforced the fact that the desires of the individual owner are secondary to the desires of the members of the social and business compact which was the NFL. Thus, in the end, though factors like what will profit Ralph's estate the most are important considerations, ultimately the veto is held by the partnership. Let's say that a highest bid was offered to and accepted by the Wilson estate which included as part of the new partnership one or more of the following wealthy individuals Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, Vladamir Putin, or Rush Limbaugh. Ralph agreed contractually that the NFL could simply veto Ralph's estate taking the highest bid unless 75% of the current NFL owners wanted to be partners with Bandar, Putin, or Limbaugh (or whoever). The way the deal works is that the vast majority of the NFL must agree to take a prospective bidder chosen by Ralph's estate as a partner or it ain't happening. The transfer fee language comes from my description of the way NFL owners make money from a deal by Ralph's estate. They care less about the ultimate payment Mr. Wilson's heirs get, but about what pays them. The only direct payment comes if he team moves and the transfer fee for moving the team is spit by the 31 (32 if Ralph's estate gets a share). This amount of money divided 30+ ways is a chunk of change to you and me. However, it is small potatoes compared to the amount of $ the NFL teams will get from adding new franchises in Mexico City, Toronto, Stugart, Buenos Aires, Tokyo and even Beijing. My sense is that the NFL does not want to distract itself or even diminish its product by dealing with 6 or 7 years of whining and death march because they decided to leave Buffalo. My guess is that they do not want to deal with fighting off Chuck Schumer when he tries to rescind the NFL partial anti-trust exemption. My guess is that even if the proposal is to move the team to Toronto that given the choice between exploiting the larger market of Toronto or the smaller (but already obtained) market in Buffalo, the NFL choice would be to exploit both. If the Sabres and Maple Leafs can both exist then why not the Bills and a new Toronto franchise (arguably the population of the Greater Toronto area has more in common with NYC in terms of corporate HQs, population size, and rich individuals and could support two teams on its own. The real value of the Bills to the NFL is as an original AFL team and offering two make the eyeballs in new foreign franchises part of 40 Years of NFL tradition. I think the Bills remain here for the forseeable future because it pays the NFL team owners more $ to keep it here than their cut of the fee for transferring the team. They would veto any attempt by the bills to sell to Osana Bin Laden's nephew if he was the high bidder and my guess is that they would veto any real attempt to mess up making the real bucks from the TV nets by Ralph's estate selling to a high bidder who decides to create the bad press and risks of moving the team.
machine gun kelly Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 I am with you Same Kelly. If the bid is significantly higher, say goodbye to the Bills. If they are relatively close, then yes. If Pegula (my hope) is close to a Toronto bid or a LA bid, then I see Pegula winning out. The bigger question with all of this wrangling is when push comes to shove, will the county and state pony up a portion for the new stadium. If yes, then the Bills will stay in Buffalo.
thebandit27 Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 Dear Family, Please devalue your inheritance by $100 million because thebandit27 says so. Signed, Ralph While your quote is sufficiently cheeky, it's also ignorant. It's not about giving a "discount" or "devaluing" their inheritance...it's about honoring their commitment as trustees. It has nothing to do with my opinion, but all the same I appreciate your desire to take a shot at me, however misguided it may be.
truth on hold Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 (edited) Pipe dream. Almost no chance of this. Trust is obligated to act in best interests of beneficiaries, not buffalo. If it leaves any money on the table the administrator will be exposed to serious liability for breach of fiduciary duty. In reality any sale that didn't meet the best interests of beneficiaries standard would be blocked from even happening. Edited June 26, 2014 by Joe_the_6_pack
Beerball Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 Pipe dream. Almost no chance of this. Trust is obligated to act in best interests of beneficiaries, not buffalo. If it leaves any money on the table the administrator will be exposed to serious liability for breach of fiduciary duty. In reality any sale that didn't meet the best interests of beneficiaries standard would be blocked from even happening. It amazes me that people like you know the details of the trust and the intentions of those who will benefit from it. You & the others should share this knowledge with the media so that everyone is on the same page.
thebandit27 Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 Pipe dream. Almost no chance of this. Trust is obligated to act in best interests of beneficiaries, not buffalo. If it leaves any money on the table the administrator will be exposed to serious liability for breach of fiduciary duty. In reality any sale that didn't meet the best interests of beneficiaries standard would be blocked from even happening. You're speaking as though fiduciary duty is the only commitment in the terms of the trust...do you know that to be true? Other folks that have proven to be reliable sources of team information seem to believe otherwise... It amazes me that people like you know the details of the trust and the intentions of those who will benefit from it. You & the others should share this knowledge with the media so that everyone is on the same page. You and me both...it also amazes me how many "experts" there are in trusts all of a sudden. Terms like "fiduciary duty" get mentioned once or twice in the media, and all of a sudden everyone throws the term around as though it has some greater meaning than it does. Ugh--can we just get to training camp so we have something else to be misinformed about?
truth on hold Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 It amazes me that people like you know the details of the trust and the intentions of those who will benefit from it. You & the others should share this knowledge with the media so that everyone is on the same page. Seriously? I'm speaking from a position of logic, precedent, and knowledge for how a trust works. There's absolutely no basis to think there's "home" discount built in. Honestly its just silly.
Beerball Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 Seriously? I'm speaking from a position of logic, precedent, and knowledge for how a trust works. There's absolutely no basis to think there's "home" discount built in. Honestly its just silly. Something is silly, I'll give you that.
CodeMonkey Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 (edited) While your quote is sufficiently cheeky, it's also ignorant. It's not about giving a "discount" or "devaluing" their inheritance...it's about honoring their commitment as trustees. It has nothing to do with my opinion, but all the same I appreciate your desire to take a shot at me, however misguided it may be. Pipe dream. Almost no chance of this. Trust is obligated to act in best interests of beneficiaries, not buffalo. If it leaves any serious money on the table the administrator will be exposed to serious liability. Pipe dream. Almost no chance of this. Trust is obligated to act in best interests of beneficiaries, not buffalo. If it leaves any money on the table the administrator will be exposed to serious liability for breach of fiduciary duty. In reality any sale that didn't meet the best interests of beneficiaries standard would be blocked from even happening. Generally speaking Joe is correct. And the "commitment as trustees" is exactly as he describes. However we do not know, and will probably never know, what if anything was written into the trust that would benefit a owner that intends to keep the team in WNY. I personally don't think there is anything in the trust like that, otherwise the Bills would not have pursued such a restrictive lease (there would be no point to it if the trust specified the team stay in WNY). But as I said, we will probably never know for sure. Edited June 26, 2014 by CodeMonkey
Iraq Vet Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 My guess is that Mary Wilson will not want to hurt her husbands legacy. But a what price? $100 Million difference in bidders, probably. If outsider offers $2 Billion the trust will sell to the outsider moving it. The money is just too great.
CodeMonkey Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 (edited) My guess is that Mary Wilson will not want to hurt her husbands legacy. But a what price? $100 Million difference in bidders, probably. If outsider offers $2 Billion the trust will sell to the outsider moving it. The money is just too great. Granted the difference between 1.1 and 1.2 billion does not look like much when you see the numbers in writing. But if you were one of the beneficiaries believe me 100 million is an awful lot of money to leave on the table. Edited June 26, 2014 by CodeMonkey
C.Biscuit97 Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 That's the Billion dollar question. Based on the way Wilson ran the Bills, I would think they will max out. I'm curious what makes you think this? He always spent money on players, was one of the most generous guys to charities, and keep the Bills in Buffalo when the area was dying.
thebandit27 Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 Generally speaking Joe is correct. And the "commitment as trustees" is exactly as he describes. However we do not know, and will probably never know, what if anything was written into the trust that would benefit a owner that intends to keep the team in WNY. I personally don't think there is anything in the trust like that, otherwise the Bills would not have pursued such a restrictive lease (there would be no point to it if the trust specified the team stay in WNY). But as I said, we will probably never know for sure. Yes, that's why my response to his above post was this: You're speaking as though fiduciary duty is the only commitment in the terms of the trust...do you know that to be true?
truth on hold Posted June 26, 2014 Posted June 26, 2014 (edited) Generally speaking Joe is correct. And the "commitment as trustees" is exactly as he describes. However we do not know, and will probably never know, what if anything was written into the trust that would benefit a owner that intends to keep the team in WNY. I personally don't think there is anything in the trust like that, otherwise the Bills would not have pursued such a restrictive lease (there would be no point to it if the trust specified the team stay in WNY). But as I said, we will probably never know for sure. I think some of the nonsense is being floated by the Erie county crowd. If people realized the home town discount can't be the case, there'd more emphasis on finding a Niagara falls site as a way to tap into a higher expected revenue stream to support a more competitive bid. The erie county crowd see niagara Falls same as move totally out of the area (like LA or Toronto move), and they're trying to equally undermine it. Edited June 26, 2014 by Joe_the_6_pack
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