The main reason the Bills will leave the Buffalo area....

[Guest dog14787]

There is more than one group in the mix, I feel that it being based on friends buying the team / Ralph leading with his heart, the team stays in Buffalo. If the other groups spend a huge amount more than the friendly group and the state incentives cannot make it up, the team is gone.

 

The local income / population is not making major city money and saying ~7% of the population needs to make the money to afford the tickets is just silly. We have to face the reality that the area has been financially challenged for far too long to think it's going to change soon.

 

SKOOBY I have cousins that would go out and cut lawns in their spare time to make up the extra money to make the games if they had to so get real.

 

If there's one thing I've learned about human nature and our great nation is if there's a will, there's a way.

 

Raising ticket prices will not phase Buffalo's ability to sell out stadiums and you don't take away one of the the city and surrounding area's best assets, its not going to happen. The Buffalo Bills have mad potential right were they are and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how stupid it would be to move the Bills out of Buffalo.

[BobDVA]

says the author of innumerable baseless, mindless, useless threads, full of unfounded speculation and false edicts from an imaginary walter mitty-like existence in SW florida, driving a imagination-powered toy car, sans brains...sans mind...sans wit...sans everything...

 

in a few short months you've gone from brash, insulting, and condescending, to stupidly annoying - all from a high speed internet connection in your mom's basement

 

honestly, it really is about time for you to go away for awhile, until you can reinvent yourself yet again, under yet another new screen name

 

At the very least, he should not be allowed to start a new thread. In addition he should only be allowed one stupid comment per thread. That is per thread, not per post.

[Delete This Account]

At the very least, he should not be allowed to start a new thread. In addition he should only be allowed one stupid comment per thread. That is per thread, not per post.

how 'bout per year, which means this poster would be barred until, by my count, the year 3,587, give or take a decade.

 

jw

[metzelaars_lives]

When it comes to this topic, everyone seems to overanalyze the situation. Let me break it down for everyone: there are 2 ways the Bills can stay in Buffalo. No. 1 Ralph Wilson makes it happen, which he could with a snap of his fingers. No. 2 Roger Goodell has a say in the matter, which would be a little trickier but still possible. The thing that makes this the most frustrating is that the Bills aren't even close to the least profitable team in the league. I hear people act on here as if the Bills leaving is inevitable because of the economy, etc., when the reality of the situation is that we just have a stubborn owner. Golisano or whoever could buy the team and make a shitload of money right here in Buffalo on the Bills. But they could make MORE in L.A. That's the point. But one thing that has to be considered is that Buffalo is a football market. Just like Winnipeg is a hockey market. You move the Bills to LA, which is NOT an NFL market and maybe 10 years from now they're not as profitable as the Bills would have been over that time span. See: Jets moving to Phoenix...

[BuffaloBaumer]

Don't you think over 2,000 posts since joining in October pretty much sums it up.......

[SKOOBY]

I seem to attract the same attackers that spend their time complaining on my threads. If you don't like what I post, avoid it. If you can't stay away, it's because of your own curiousity & the intrigue of the topic. I don't post like everyone else and try to keep it a little different. Different to some of you is retarded and challenging, so avoid me and stay simple.

[ricojes]

There is more than one group in the mix, I feel that it being based on friends buying the team / Ralph leading with his heart, the team stays in Buffalo. If the other groups spend a huge amount more than the friendly group and the state incentives cannot make it up, the team is gone.

 

The local income / population is not making major city money and saying ~7% of the population needs to make the money to afford the tickets is just silly. We have to face the reality that the area has been financially challenged for far too long to think it's going to change soon.

BMW sales are up....

[thebandit27]

I seem to attract the same attackers that spend their time complaining on my threads. If you don't like what I post, avoid it. If you can't stay away, it's because of your own curiousity & the intrigue of the topic. I don't post like everyone else and try to keep it a little different. Different to some of you is retarded and challenging, so avoid me and stay simple.

 

That's right skooby, continue to snap back rubber-band style by insulting people's intelligence, rather than defending your shot-from-the-hip stance when someone questions the validity based on real numbers and data.

 

Yes skoob, you post different topics. Do you believe that they shouldn't be scrutinized as closely as other because their different? If you don't want to be questioned, don't post controversial items.

[Guest dog14787]

SKOOBY's threads generally start up good debates so I've got no problem with most of them, all you have to do is look back on some of his threads and by post count he's probably one of the most popular thread starters on TSW.

 

Boring around here sometimes without a good, passionate debate, even if what we are debating is SKOOBY's sanity.

[PromoTheRobot]

Anyone who thnks Ralph is greedy or somehow scheming to make the Bills bad so they are easier to move is at worst crazy and at least ungrateful to a an owner who's heart is in the right place.

 

If Ralph really were the greedy SOB some of you accuse him of being this team would be gone 10 years ago. Ralph Wilson could have sold the Bills and made 10 times more money than he makes now and he wouldn't have to put up with moronic comments like these. And while the Bills were in Buffalo tickets and parking would 2-3x higher.

 

As for the Bills being bad, I think Ralph as much as any of us wants a winner. He just doesn't know how to build one. True he had Bill Polian here and fired him, but we don't really know what Bill did to piss off Ralph. Polian wasn't known for his people skills. Since then we've had John Butler who was a Polian disciple, Tom Donahoe who was supposed to be such a football guru, then Marv who was supposed to ressurect the 90's Bills. All have failed. Now Ralph probably feels like he can't make a good decision so he's just going to stick with what he has an hope for the best.

 

I think when you are in your 90's and your end can occur at any moment, your perspective on things changes. The whining of frustrated fans doesn't mean so much, especially when your daughter goes before you do. Despite what many say here, there is little Ralph can really do to absolutely guarantee the Bills stay in Buffalo. Like so many of you Republican-types like to point out we live in a market economy and businesses should be free to make the most money they can. So why do you expect any new owner of the Bills to keep the team here when they can make double in L.A.?

 

It sucks but enjoy the Bills while we have them. Maybe we end up splitting the team with Toronto if we're lucky.

 

PTR

[Psaunders]

Is the income potential of the locals, just like Ralph said. Ralph mentioned that there is not a strong enough economy currently in place to support a normal NFL ticket price, based on someone else owning the team & the initial expenses of buying a NFL team. So what he was really saying is (in the nicest way), a majority of the people that live there are incapable of doing much past menial work for menial wages to earn a normal professional living and even if they could the jobs are just not there in the first place.

 

Sadly, upon Ralph's death I think we lost our team unless Ralph sells it ahead of time to a group capable of holding out for a better time. After 30 + years of local depression, who knows when that will come as well.

 

Yeah there is no way they can survive here we only sold out every game last year and and we are already on te way to sell more season tickets than we did last year.

[PromoTheRobot]

Yeah there is no way they can survive here we only sold out every game last year and and we are already on te way to sell more season tickets than we did last year.

You do realize that it's corporate money that is the difference maker? Ticket sales are shared revenue. Suites and club section revenues are kept by the teams. Plus the Bills suites go for 1/10th what they sell for in Dallas and New England*. We'd have to sell 750,000 tickets a game to make up the difference.

 

PTR

[TheLynchTrain]

These threads have gone on and on....one pops up every week....enough of this crap skooby

[Tbone]

There is more than one group in the mix, I feel that it being based on friends buying the team / Ralph leading with his heart, the team stays in Buffalo. If the other groups spend a huge amount more than the friendly group and the state incentives cannot make it up, the team is gone.

 

The local income / population is not making major city money and saying ~7% of the population needs to make the money to afford the tickets is just silly. We have to face the reality that the area has been financially challenged for far too long to think it's going to change soon.

 

You simply have no clue. Spewing more unfounded B.S. doesnt make you any more credible- the next time you get your weekly itch to post something about the team moving or Ralph selling, do us all a favor and dont.

[Gordio]

You do realize that it's corporate money that is the difference maker? Ticket sales are shared revenue. Suites and club section revenues are kept by the teams. Plus the Bills suites go for 1/10th what they sell for in Dallas and New England*. We'd have to sell 750,000 tickets a game to make up the difference.

 

PTR

 

& you realize that your comparing buffalo to the top 4-5 cities in this country financially speaking. Without seeing the numbers last year from Forbes, I guaranty there are at least 12-15 teams in the NFL right now that are less profitable then the bills. Why dont you ever talk about them moving to LA or Toronto? So Buffalo is never going to be confused with NY, Boston, Dallas or Chicago. Neither is 95% of the other NFL teams.

[Endless Ike]

lower taxes & reduce union strangleholds to make it more business friendly

 

fat chance, all of NYS is doomed

[Fingon]

Where will the Bills go, Toronto? It would cost around $3 billion to move the team there. LA? The Bills aren't even in the running to go there.

[Delete This Account]

If you can't stay away, it's because of your own curiousity & the intrigue of the topic.

no, it's because of the intrinsic car-wreck quality of these meaningless, endless and repetitive posts in which you ...

 

I don't post like everyone else and try to keep it a little different.

have a ceaseless knack to contradict yourself by avoiding reality ...

 

Different to some of you is retarded and challenging, so avoid me and stay simple.

before resorting to outlandish claims or mere name-calling.

 

jw

 

edited.

[SouthGeorgiaBillsFan]

The plain fact of the matter is if the Bills win, people will buy tickets at prices comparable to any market. You cannot blame it on poor economy. Blame it on trading away talent because people don't like to watch their favorite team lose. That's the bottom line. Win and people will pay to see games, especially in a depressed region. Lose and who wants to, especially in a depressed region?

[DazedandConfused]

You do realize that it's corporate money that is the difference maker? Ticket sales are shared revenue. Suites and club section revenues are kept by the teams. Plus the Bills suites go for 1/10th what they sell for in Dallas and New England*. We'd have to sell 750,000 tickets a game to make up the difference.

 

PTR

My understanding (I am certain I am wrong about at least some of the details of the CBA as it takes the combined efforts of 100s of legal beagles working for the NFL and NFLPA to write and understand it so please correct me with as specific references as possible and we will all learn) is:

 

1. A key to the latest CBA was the the NFLPA demanded and received that the salary cap would be determined based not upon designated gross receipts (this element of the old CBA led teams like the Bills to reduce the total size of the Ralph to convert general ticket sales which were designated to be split into premium seats which the owners got all the proceeds) to now the cap is based on the total team receipts.

 

Under this configuration there is no distinction for team owners and the NFLPA between premium seats, booths, etc and general ticket sales because they are all subject to sharing by the team owner and NFLPA as now the salary cap is based on total team receipts rather than merely a designated portion of gross receipts.

 

This explains why under the old CBA the salary cap was based on a sliding scale of the designated gross receipts which got as high as the NFLPA getting as much as 72% of the designated gross to now "drop" to the NFLPA getting 60.5% of the total gross receipts. Gene Upshaw and the NFLPA dictated to the NFL that the salary cap proposal from the NFL to the NFLPA needed to start with a 6. Ralph and the boys met this dictate by awarding the NFLPA with as close to 6 as they could get by designating 60.5% for the NFLPA. Even with this extraordinary number it still took major twisting of arm of the old guard of inidivudalistic owners by Tagliabue to get the CBA agreed to.

 

Overall, I think the error that some of us armchair analysts make is that we still think about the NFL as being a free market model where individual team owners make purely individual decisions about what is in for their own team. This quaint notion was never really fully true as the NFL individual owners were competitors on the field, but in the business offices the individual teams were partners with each other and competitors actually with opposing leagues like the USFL and other major sports like the NHL or NBA with whom the seasons had major overlap and they were competing for the consumers entertainment dollars and discretionary income.

 

The NFL cut a deal with the US government to get conditional agreement to violate the free market. The NFL restrains trade and has not only successfully locked out of the market against competing football teams but the government allows it to collude together with the NFL draft and bans even adults from signing contracts at the best deal the free market can manufacture for an individual player with an individual owner.

 

It is simply incorrect to make judgments about what will happen based only on what helps the Bills bottomline of the Bills as a corporation owned by Ralph Wilson. When Ralph dies the NFL as a whole has an absolute ability to accept or reject whom Ralph's estate sales the Bills to.

 

For the NFL, they are looking not only to generate income not only from the highest bidder for the Bills, but also there is substantial value in keeping the Bills in their original town and provide a link for new far larger markets in Mexico City, Europe, and elsewhere overseas by linking these new markets to the history of the NFL.

 

Will it make sense to move the Bills franchise to a new town? Possibly. However, it can easily make more financial sense for the NFL as a whole to retain the franchise in Buffalo as a selling point for them to allow new markets where the potential for allowing Mexico City to be part of five decades of history with traditional NFL locales such as Buffalo, Green Bay, Tampa Bay or even smaller markets or less viable economic engines than Buffalo and its existing 50,000+ season ticket base.

 

Might the Bills move? Possibly. Will the franchise stay in Buffalo or be a hybrid Buf-Tor Bills? I think this second alternative to moving actually will produce more $ for the NFL entity than it would for simply selling the team to the highest individual bidder.

 

It is simply an error to think of the Bills as being based on a free market model which never really existed because the true owner of the NFL entity as a social entity beyond the individual owner will make more money by keeping the franchise here and sell its ties to the NFL traditions to the truly big market of foreign cities.

 

2. In addition to it being a fundamental error to not understand there is more money to be made in social rather than free market models, there seems to be limited understanding that rather than individual owners simply kicking the players butts as was done in the mid 80s lockout, the workers embodied in the NFLPA are actually partners rather than mere employees of the NFL.

 

In fact, now that the new CBA delivers the vast majority of total gross receipts to the NFLPA they arguably are the majority partners of this endeavor. We see this reflected in the old guard like Ralph and Cincy having to be dragged kicking and screaming into this new deal by none other than Paul Tagliabue.

 

Since the signing of the CBA we see the NFLPA actively promoting discipline against players like Pac-Man Jones, Chris Henry, and Micheal Vick because their idiocy endangers the market product and reputation of the entire parnership by these individuals being their stupid selves. Under the traditional American free market every individual has the right to take drugs, sell dog fights to the extent the laws allows them to be cruel to animals, or do whatever and the market will decide who gets to sale tickets.

 

No more in the modern NFL model where individual rights are constrained by corporate agreement. Its actually quite amazing really that in the MLB and other major sports 16 year olds can sign contracts to sell their skills to he highest bidder but in the NFL 20 year olds are not allowed to do this because their "classmates" have not graduated yet.

 

In exchange for this government agreed to restraint on individual rights, the NFL gets the benefit of unlike MLB and the NHL where they have to pay and take risks to develop 16 year olds into athletes. In the NFL colleges take all these costs on (in exchange for getting to pump up their own alumni giving and ticket sales for bowl games and March Madness) by paying for this player development.

 

The real irony is that by not getting the rights to these athletes until they have been educated in college, a talented tenth led by Gene Upshaw, Troy Vincent and the like have parleyed this into an NFLPA which by threatened to dissolve itself and force Ralph and the boys into a true free market instead got the current CBA which recognizes the workers as the majority partners in this thing we call the NFL.