Bills, Sabres winning big at the box office despite weak economy
Season ticket sales are robust for both teams
We have a shrinking population, a flat economy and no Fortune 500 companies.
We also have two major-league sports franchises that seem to be at the top of their games — business-wise, anyway.
Both are absolute hits at the box office. The Buffalo Bills have sold 54,200 season tickets, the third most in team history.
The team could sell out every ticket before the regular season starts, with only a few tickets expected to be available next month for six of their seven home games; a more substantial number remains for the New England game.
The Buffalo Sabres say that 97 percent of their season-ticket holders have re-upped for next season, and they once again expect to cap their season-ticket sales at 14,800. That would leave the team with a pair of waiting lists, for season tickets and for their 80 suites.
Everyone loves a winner, but both teams are coming off nonplayoff seasons, and the Bills haven’t made the playoffs since 1999. Many Bills fans also fear their team could be headed out of town soon.
Yet both teams are on the verge of selling out their seasons.
What’s going on here? Academic types have said for years that the region’s psyche, its sense of identity, seems inordinately wrapped up in the fortunes of its teams.
“I think Buffalo has a love relationship with its teams,” said Ted Fay, a Cortland State College sports management professor. “The fans may get [ticked] off, but the visceral relationship is true love. It takes a long time to build, and it takes a long time to destroy.”
But there are other factors involved, according to several Bills and Sabres watchers:
• Both franchises have perhaps their strongest marketing and sales teams ever.
“I think what you’re seeing in both organizations is a business acumen that wasn’t evident a decade ago,” said Erkie Kailbourne, chairman emeritus of Business Backs the Bills.
• Sabres and Bills fans are excited about their teams’ prospects, led by a strong nucleus of emerging young players.
• Both teams, especially the Bills, have done a better job in regionalizing their franchises, mostly to the east and north.
• Those efforts have been helped by the relatively strong Canadian dollar. The same economic forces luring Canadians into long traffic lines outside the Walden Galleria also create long lines at the box office of the sports teams.
• The Bills and Sabres also have been smart about not out-pricing their markets, with both setting ticket prices that rank near the bottom in their leagues.
• And as any student of economics knows, the scarcity of tickets helps spur demand even further.
The Bills, still trying to add to their season-ticket base, have set aside a limited number of tickets for each game to sell as season tickets. So they expect a few tickets to be available for each home game when individual tickets go on sale Aug. 21; a substantial number of tickets remains only for the New England game on Dec. 28.
Ten years ago, the Bills sold 31,141 season tickets.
“This isn’t a onetime wonder,” Bills chief operating officer Russ Brandon said Thursday. “This has been a strategic effort over the past decade to get our season-ticket total above 40,000 and now 50,000.”
Any discussion about the Sabres’ and Bills’ current box-office success in tough economic times starts with the strong emotional connection that Western New Yorkers have to their teams.
“I think it speaks volumes for the passion people have for the Bills and Sabres,” said Daniel J. DiPofi, the Sabres’ chief operating officer. “This is an extremely passionate sports town.”
But is that really any different from the situation in any other sports town in America?
Fay, the Cortland State professor, thinks it is.
In Fay’s mind, there’s something unique about the sports fans in some of the smaller and medium-sized markets, especially in cold-weather towns.
“It’s not the Riviera on Lake Erie,” Fay said of Buffalo. “It’s not glitz and gloss. It’s hardworking people who show up every day and work hard.”
That blue-collar mentality is reflected in the fans’ connection to their teams.
“People are still willing to invest in a hope and a dream that their teams reflect the past, perhaps the present, but more importantly, the future of their community,” he added.
Fay and others admit, though, that that connection alone isn’t enough to keep the turnstiles clicking.
“You cannot simply live off the commitment and connection that people have had with their teams,” he added. “[Effective] management makes a terrific difference in this equation.”
Both franchises are credited with having savvy management teams that have built much stronger relationships with the local business community.
Years ago, critics have said, Bills owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr.’s basic marketing strategy was to put the strongest possible team on the field.
Then he hired Brandon, who joined the Bills in 1997 and made such huge strides in the team’s marketing and business operations that he has risen to chief operating officer.
Kailbourne, who has worked closely with the Bills for years, can’t speak highly enough of the efforts made by Brandon under Wilson’s leadership.
“I think it is an initiative driven by the recognition that it’s not only the product on the field but also the yearlong affinity with your sponsors, your corporate partners and your fans,” he said.
Those efforts include forging stronger business partnerships and sponsorships; moving training camp to Pittsford, to help build the fan base and business connections in the Rochester area; providing incentives for premium-seat holders; and moving one regular-season game per year to Toronto, to make season tickets more affordable here and expand the team’s fan and business base.
Not to be outdone is the Sabres management team, led by two strong business executives, owner B. Thomas Golisano and managing partner Larry Quinn.
Besides also building a strong connection to the local business community, the Sabres have done virtually everything they can to build their season-ticket base.
They’ve provided incentives for their season-ticket holders, even keeping playoff and season- ticket price hikes moderate after the team’s on-ice success two and three years ago.
The Sabres’ business model follows a simple theme: Earn the loyalty of season-ticket holders when things are going well, so that loyalty is repaid when leaner times hit.
That model was tested this off-season. The team has managed to survive the fan furor over the recent departures of popular players Chris Drury, Daniel Briere and Brian Campbell and the failure to make the playoffs last season.
“Loyalty has been a two-way street,” DiPofisaid. “I think our renewal rate this year reflects that.”
Team officials also have pointed out that last year’s season- ticket prices were lower than the 2003-04 prices, except for the 300 Level seats. Sabres officials suspect that their average ticket price for the coming season will rank about 26th or 27th out of 30 NHL teams.
“We’ve been highly sensitive to price,” DiPofisaid.
He mentioned another point about box-office success in tough economic times.
“I’ve always been under the impression that sports are more insulated [from] the bad economic times we go through than other entertainment,” he said. “It’s something to rally around, an emotional commitment.”
