Are the Bills are a "regional" team?

[Bob Chandler's Hands]

What's amazing to me is if you live in NY state on the border with PA you find overwhelmingly it's Bills country (at least west of, say, Corning). 
Whereas if you drive 5-10 minutes south into PA it's clearly Steelers country. 

It's not like there is a river or mountains or a major city in PA splitting the two. Just the invisible border between states. 

 

Rochester is very much Bills Country. By the time you get to Syracuse it's more a split with the Giants and Jets, with Bills probably holding an edge. By the time you get to Albany it's Giants/Jets in the lead followed by Bills.

 

 

[Ethan in Cleveland]

Bills are a national team. It's not people from Buffalo that travel to away games. It is people that grew up and left the area that go to those games.  There is a reason why there is a Bills bar in many towns and not a Browns or Jets bar.  

[Logic]

I don't know, but I'll tell ya one thing: the salary cap isn't real.

[Rico]

1 hour ago, Buffalo716 said:

Buffalo was once a huge city that has been shrinking for 50 years

 

So there are buffalonians transplanted all over the US 

 

Western New York is obviously heavy bills country.. but everywhere you go from Florida to Texas to California you'll find pockets of Bills fans because they left and never came back

Agreed… as opposed to Kansas City, where you will be hard-pressed to find a Chiefs fan outside of Missouri or Kansas.  

[Augie]

55 minutes ago, Don Otreply said:

Former Rochester guy, living in CT, and snow birding to avoid winter, I see Bills fans everywhere I travel to, From up and down the East coast to the Bahamas, to California, we Bills fans are nation wide, and international 😁👍

 

The TV coverage map is one way to look at it, but we don’t have sufficient coverage in any one area to affect what games are televised. Maybe a more telling way to judge it is the size of the crowds at Bills Backers bars and the attendance of people in Bills gear at road games all over the country. We are VERY well represented at away games, and it seems most (but certainly not all) of those fans live somewhere other than WNY. 

[Saxum]

Hamilton area is very solid Bills with before pandemic had 10K Bills fans.

As a Bills Backers president we used to have access to list of Bills Backers groups with numbers.

The closer to Bills get with ticket resellers the less the Bills have been supporting such groups.

  

When you get to Toronto area percentage goes down.

There used to be Lions fans from from London to Winslor.

[Zerovoltz]

22 minutes ago, Rico said:

Agreed… as opposed to Kansas City, where you will be hard-pressed to find a Chiefs fan outside of Missouri or Kansas.  

I'm not disagreeing with that.  KC's fans are concentrated around KC and we pick up a bit of SE Nebraska, SW Iowa.  Not much of a region compared to others.   

[Jauronimo]

All teams are regional.  Those regions are generally fairly small in the Northeast where you have half a dozen other metros within a few hours drive.  The Patriots are the only truly regional team in the northeast as Boston is the main hub of the New England area.

 

Denver is unique as they are bordered on all sides by massive states that do not have professional football.  Dallas was also well positioned in that regard.  The old Oilers leaving Houston crippled the Houston market.

 

[T&C]

1 hour ago, RoyBatty is alive said:

 

So part of Wyoming now is Bills Country.

Wyoming County always has been.

[stuvian]

Ontario is bigger than most European countries and as such the Bills cannot claim it exclusively for their own.

 

That said, the Bills can reasonably claim the Niagara region, St Catherine's and Hamilton.

 

There are too many bandwagon fans in Ottawa and Toronto for the Bills to claim these cities exclusively.

 

Ottawa is composed of many ex-Montrealers who fled separatist Quebec with Patriot loyalties. Ottawa and Montreal still have loyal CFL fanbases.

 

Still Bills fans loom large in both Ottawa and Toronto.

 

As you go west of Niagara Falls to Kitchener-Waterloo, London and Windsor you are in Detroit Lions Territory. Everything from Sault St Marie to Manitoba is split between the Packers and Vikings.

 

This does not account for fans of "national" teams like Dallas, Pittsburgh and the Raiders for which there are strong followings.

 

I have only met one Jets fan in nearly 40 years of living in Ontario. 

Edited July 15, 2021 by stuvian

[Motorin']

1 hour ago, Ethan in Portland said:

Bills are a national team. It's not people from Buffalo that travel to away games. It is people that grew up and left the area that go to those games.  There is a reason why there is a Bills bar in many towns and not a Browns or Jets bar.  

 

This map is pretty cool:

 

https://map.paranoidfan.com/backers

[ChasBB]

Here is map of Bills' region:

 

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by ChasBB
better link

[ChronicAndKnuckles]

Absolutely. I am originally from Rochester and I would say we have just as many Bills fans per capita as Buffalo. Of course you have your generic “trying to be cool and go against the grain” Dolphins and Giants fans, but Rochester and all surrounding areas are generally pro Bills. There is also a huge following in NYC.

[Mickey]

Syracuse is mostly Bills country. 

[Mr. WEO]

Given how tiny Buffalo is, the Bills define "regional team".

[Bubba Gump]

3 hours ago, RoyBatty is alive said:

I would think Ontario is considered "Bills Country", at least judged by license plates at home games.  Where is gets really iffy is when you get out to Rochester and east or down south toward Pennsylvania. 

 

Being from Rochester I can confirm 100% that Rochester is at least 95% Bills fans. They start to fade the closer you get to Syracuse. Northern PA, like Bradford has maybe a 50/50 split between Bills and Steelers fans. Plenty of Southern Ontario Bills fans, just not sure I'd label it Bills country. Just like Detroit prolly has plenty of fans from Windsor, Ontario. But they wouldn't consider it Lions country. I'd consider true Bills country to be the NY/PA border to the west, Rochester/Geneva to the east and the NY/PA border to the south. IMO

[Rico]

32 minutes ago, Mr. WEO said:

Given how tiny Buffalo is, the Bills define "regional team".

Well, NYC area is massive, but you won’t find too many Jets fans outside of it.

[Pete]

I represent Bills Mafia in Massachusetts.  We are everywhere!

[BADOLBILZ]

3 hours ago, Zerovoltz said:

Curious about the Bills footprint in it's market.  I am not from Buffalo, WNY, the Northeast etc...I don't know your area etc.  

 

Denver would be a team with a large regional footprint where they have high numbers of fans in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, western Nebraska...that kind of thing.  

 

Mostly I guess I am wondering if Ontario is consider "Bills Country" or not?  If it isn't why not?  How much of New York do you say is Bills fan territory?  What about Erie, PA is that where the Steeler or Browns butt up against Bills areas?  Just wondering.  

 

 

 

 

At the Bills lowest,  least relevant or interesting point of the 2000's.......about 10-12 years ago.....about 15% of the season tickets were held by Canadians.

 

Even then the Canadian base seemed to be growing...........though perhaps fueled mostly by the ability to have huge outdoor public tailgate parties.    Ontario is much more restrictive in that regard. 

 

At the typical game in recent seasons there is a larger Canadian presence........I'd assume between 20%-30% of the crowd are from Ontario.

 

Relatively easy to tell how many Canadians are around you because WNY and Ontario dialects are VERY different even if the people live as little as 10 miles apart from each other.    

 

There are about 15 million people in Ontario so it's got the potential be much larger still for the Bills if they can become important and develop a generation of new fans.

 

The drought Bills survived and thrived because the SB-era Bills built a young, durable fanbase that became ST holders in the early 2000's...........another sustained run could really develop the market even more.

 

 

[Buffalove1]

Im in Ithaca and its split with Bills and Giants. But Bills dominate in the rural areas and surrounding cities like Elmira and Cortland. With the Bills doing better and Giants sucking lately definite edge to Bills these past 5 years.  Jets 3rd Steelers distant 4th

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Buffalove1