Just Jack Posted August 6, 2010 Share Posted August 6, 2010 If Buffalo were to lose the Bills, I could see the UFL start looking to place a new team in Orchard Park. Look at the benefits, there's already a stadium with office space, and practice fields, both indoor and outdoor. 50,000 former season ticket holders, which I would only expect 5-10,000 to buy for the new team. I'd close off the upper deck, maybe even take it out entirely, to save on the cost of upkeep. Except for the clubs/suites, I'd make the max price for a ticket $50. The stadium would sure look better than some of those high school looking places they used last season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillsPhan Posted August 7, 2010 Share Posted August 7, 2010 ...What Buffalo has and no one can take away is its 40 year history as an NFL town and a rabid fan base which even if the NFL is choosing between new money in some sunbelt city or maintaining the bird in the hand of the profitable take that is the Buffalo Bills franchise.... Cleveland had 46 years as an NFL team and Modell strolled out of town to Baltimore without the NFL making a peep. Only Randy Lerner, and his money, allowed the Browns' "rabid" fan base to rally and force Modell's hand by making him agree to abandon the Browns name, colors and history. And lest you forget, Cleveland tax payers had to ante up to pay for their new stadium, and the season ticket owners are now forced to pay PSL's for seats equal or even worse sight-line wise to seats they had in the old stadium. What a great deal for them - and on top of all that, they had to be without a team for 3 years while all of this took place! Let me ask you, does it sound like the NFL cared about losing the traditional Cleveland market to you?? Did they offer to pay for any part of the new stadium, or force Randy Lerner not to charge his PSL's to those "loyal" season ticket holders? Of course not. The "NFL" as you refer to it, is not some separate "fair-minded" entity, whose only cause for existing is to "guard the tradition and loyalty of all of it's fans in all of it's cities." The NFL is a money-making machine, and the commissioner answers to all 32 owners. If enough of them vote to approve of the ownership group that wins the eventual sale of the Buffalo Bills, regardless of where that group plans on taking the franchise to play, that is what will be. And I don't imagine any of those other 31 owners will be taking Buffalo's great market for the next "new pro football league" into consideration, when they make their vote! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hplarrm Posted August 7, 2010 Author Share Posted August 7, 2010 Cleveland had 46 years as an NFL team and Modell strolled out of town to Baltimore without the NFL making a peep. Only Randy Lerner, and his money, allowed the Browns' "rabid" fan base to rally and force Modell's hand by making him agree to abandon the Browns name, colors and history. And lest you forget, Cleveland tax payers had to ante up to pay for their new stadium, and the season ticket owners are now forced to pay PSL's for seats equal or even worse sight-line wise to seats they had in the old stadium. What a great deal for them - and on top of all that, they had to be without a team for 3 years while all of this took place! Let me ask you, does it sound like the NFL cared about losing the traditional Cleveland market to you?? Did they offer to pay for any part of the new stadium, or force Randy Lerner not to charge his PSL's to those "loyal" season ticket holders? Of course not. The "NFL" as you refer to it, is not some separate "fair-minded" entity, whose only cause for existing is to "guard the tradition and loyalty of all of it's fans in all of it's cities." The NFL is a money-making machine, and the commissioner answers to all 32 owners. If enough of them vote to approve of the ownership group that wins the eventual sale of the Buffalo Bills, regardless of where that group plans on taking the franchise to play, that is what will be. And I don't imagine any of those other 31 owners will be taking Buffalo's great market for the next "new pro football league" into consideration, when they make their vote! What I suspect is that in the same way that Tagliabooboo and the other powers that be which manage the NFL as a profit making entity for the owners will make a similar compelling case to the individual owners that they made when they got them (over the voting objections of Ralph and GB) that the way for them to maximize profits is to do things which convince or allow the TV networks to continue delivering money to the team owners. In this world while Jerry Jones, Snyder, et al can do well on their own for a while (a short while actually but then the free market creates such few big winners and a lot of smaller losers that the whole product founders. Pete Rozelle's ultimate vision which is finally coming true is to create a business called the NFL which actually is much more of a socialized collective than a classic free market business. The socialized collective does such non-free market things as reward failure (the losing teams get better draft picks) and the law allows this collective to make deals with the workers socialized collective, the NFLPA to do non- free market stuff like restrain free trade through the player draft (even adults are kept out of the player market as unlike baseball which begins bidding for talent at 16 or the NBA where high school graduates can apply to enter the draft, you are kept out until the men of your age would graduate from college. While the actual decision-makers (in essence the TV nets because its the Golden Rule- he who has the gold rules) decide to maximize profits the market they are selling to is not this urban area or that urban areas, it the eyeballs around the world. The main reason I suspect a team will remain in Buffalo is that its a good part of the story which the nets are happy to ship billions of dollars to the NFL in order to sell it. Ticket sales and local advertising is a substantial cash cow which will not be ignored. However, it is a relatively small cash stream compared to the real deal of selling eyeballs to show beer, car and soap ads to. Buffalos greatest value to the NFL is that it is part of the tradition of the league as they move to buy access to more eyeballs in Mexico City, Toronto and Europe. My guess is that the main determinant on future location of the franchise is whether there is more money to be made simply by moving the Bills to Toronto or by opening a new franchise in Toronto to do a Maple Leaf/Sabres kind of thing. Otherwise it is just a bird in the hand calculation as there may be money to be made in another municipality but moving the Bills somewhere else means walking away from 40 years of marketing which created a near billion dollar entity. When given a choice between Buffalo and some other city an individual owner might make a choice to go one place or the other, but the NFL choice will clearly be both. I say the NFL should be careful because if the abandon Buffalo, in addition to the bad and sad press it creates while they are trying to sell a story of gleeful expansion to new markets, it also means they simply walk away from a lot of assets created here. Some of these assets they can load in a Mayflower van and take with them. However, a lot of them representing a far from majority (the market is the TV audience) but still is a huge often cash asset. If they leave that I think that someone will try to come in and collect those assets (40 years of football madness, local advertisers, 40.000+ season ticket holders, local media excitement, the county owned stadium, etc. In particular if the timing of the Bills leaving town coincides with CBA negotiations then it would make perfect sense for the players to launch their own league with Buffalo as a tie to the old days and traditions. A competing league would likely have the same benefit for the players that the AFL had when Ralph and others launched it and the USFL had when they signed players like Jim Kelly in that it escalated salaries and union power to new heights to have some good old American competition for talent. Would the NFL powers that be want to keep Buffalo a franchise because of its beliefs in the old traditions? NO (are you kidding me-show them the money) However, would they want to keep the Bills in Buffalo because that maximizes their profits (they prefer to have Buffalo +other eyeballs and the market does not force them to choose like it does an individual owner ) and also leaving does not create opportunities for successful competition. My guess is the Bills stay because there is more money for the NFL if they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rico Posted August 7, 2010 Share Posted August 7, 2010 <snip>1. Even when these efforts are failures in terms of creating a sustainable economic entity, the failures are not only survivable for the cash behind the new effort (the Donald was a big driver behind the USFL) but in fact the driver can make out like a bandit from the failed effort (the MacMahon where the the wife of this team is riding the Tea Party impetus to where she appears about to beat the GOP standard bearer for the GOP nomination and then she will run against the badly wounded Dem for the Senate seat. <snip> Al Franken, now maybe Linda McMahon in the Senate... outstanding! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts