Bills season-ticket sales show fans keeping faith
Officials expect to top 50,000
By Gene Warner
Updated: 05/07/08 8:46 AM
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The Buffalo Bills haven’t been in the playoffs since 1999. And many Bills fans fear the franchise has one foot out the door — possibly moving to Toronto — once owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr. passes from the scene.
But those twin developments haven’t seemed to hurt the Bills at the turnstiles.
With four months left until the Sept. 7 home opener against Seattle, the Bills already have surpassed last year’s season-ticket total of 48,236.
The current total already is around 49,000.
Bills officials say the numbers are tracking toward breaking the 50,000 mark, which would be the highest total since 1993, the last of the four straight Super Bowl glory years.
“Our goal is 50,000, but we think we could go beyond that,” said David Wheat, senior vice president of business operations.
Are Bills fans sending a message to the National Football League?
“I think the message is the same message that’s it’s been all along, that we have some of the most loyal fans in the league,” said Scott Berchtold, vice president of communications.
Bills officials are well aware of the region’s fears about losing the team, especially after all the fanfare about moving eight games to Toronto in the next five years.
“At first, we heard some concerns from a few fans, but we haven’t seen it in ticket sales, hits on our Web site or corporate interest,” Berchtold said.
Moving one regular-season and one preseason game to Toronto this season probably has helped local ticket sales in one way. Even though the average season-ticket price for a game rose by 10.3 percent, Bills fans are paying for eight games rather than 10.
So the average season-ticket cost has dropped some 11.8 percent.
Fans also can find two other silver linings in the big cloud hanging over the Toronto games. Season-ticket holders have to pay for only one preseason game, not two. And they don’t have to pay for one of the late-season “home” December games; the Dec. 7 game against Miami has been moved to Toronto.
Bills officials cite another reason for the strong seasonticket numbers.
“I think a lot of it is the optimism fans have regarding this year’s team,” Berchtold said. “We’re as optimistic as anybody about our chances of making the playoffs, and our fans have certainly responded to that.”
Wheat also mentioned the added benefits that have been provided recently to seasonticket holders.
They include a larger discount in season-ticket prices (compared with individual game tickets) and season-ticket holders’ first dibs on individual tickets before they go on sale to the public in July.
By early July last year, for example, the team already had sold out two games and had only “scattered” tickets left for three others, before tickets went on sale to the public.
“For the most part, we have really created a scarcity of tickets,” Wheat said.
Gordon Ballard, president of the Monday Quarterback Club, cited the fans’ hunger to get back to the playoffs.
“And I think the educated fans have seen what the Bills have done in the off-season, both in free-agent acquisitions and the draft,” he said.
How about the concerns for the team’s long-term future here?
“While we have [the] Buffalo Bills, I think everybody appreciates them,” Ballard said. “And they’re making the right moves, further regionalizing the team, to help ensure the long-term viability of the franchise.”
Meanwhile, plans to move the stadium press box to the corner of one end zone — and replace it with high-priced, sideline premium seating — are dead, at least for this year.
In October 2006, the Bills revealed that they planned to move the press box in time for the 2008 season, part of a $20 million package of state-funded stadium improvements.
No such construction has begun, with only four months left until opening day, and Bills officials confirmed that the project is dead for this year.
“I don’t know about the future,” Berchtold said.
Events in Albany apparently have doomed this $20 million package, at least for now.
The proposal in 2006 followed talks between then-Gov. George E. Pataki and Wilson, who openly questioned the long-term viability of the franchise here under the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Pataki and legislative leaders sounded receptive to approving that $20 million package. But a change in administrations, from Pataki to Eliot L. Spitzer and then Spitzer’s fall from grace may have killed that proposal for good.
