October 21, 2011
Titans, Bills seek stadium renovations
Another day, another NFL team asking for stadium upgrades. Today it's the Tennessee Titans, who are seeking renovations to 12-year-old LP Field:
Upgrades to everything between and underneath must be examined before the Bills and Erie County can move forward on a lease extension.
The Bills hired Populous, an architectural firm based in Kansas City, Mo., to conduct an exhaustive study of Ralph Wilson Stadium's infrastructure. The study will determine how much necessary improvements will cost.
Wait, hold on, wrong article! That one is about how the Buffalo Bills, who are seeking renovations to their field, 38-year-old Ralph Wilson Stadium, which was just renovated in 1997. The Titans are seeking $25 million in upgrades to the sound system, scoreboards, and concessions areas; the Bills want an estimated $100 million or more in improvements to concourses, restrooms, and concessions areas, among other things.
Also likely different is how the two teams plan to pay for upgrades. The Titans are looking to use an already existing ticket tax, which they would raise from $2 to $3 — something that largely comes out of their own pockets, say economists, since it limits the price that they can get away with charging fans in face value. Bills execs, meanwhile, haven't said who'll pay for improvements, but it's clear it wouldn't be them:
"Cost is an unknown and could be in a wide range," Erie County Executive Chris Collins said. "I'm expecting New York State to pay for these improvements. But you can't sit down and have meaningful negotiations until this study is complete."
The difference: The Titans are in the middle of their lease, while the Bills' current lease with Erie County expires next year, giving them leverage to demand subsidies or else move to Toronto or Los Angeles or someplace like that. (Not that anyone from the Bills would threaten that aloud, but there are plenty of other people to do it for them.) So we have the prospect of Jets and Giants fans (and, um, me) helping to pay for improvements to their rivals' stadium.
The hope would be that the Bills would at least agree to share some of their increased profits with taxpayers in the new lease in exchange for renovations, but I really wouldn't be holding my breath there, unless some savvy negotiators in the state legislature can ... er, never mind.
June 14, 2011
AEG short list for L.A. NFL relocation actually a long list
No sooner was it reported that AEG president Tim Leiweke had narrowed the list of teams targeted for a move to a new Los Angeles stadium to five than unnamed AEG officials declared that they're actually in touch with more than five teams:
AEG president Tim Leiweke told The Orange County Register on Thursday that his group has been in contact with the Rams, Raiders, Jaguars, Vikings and Chargers, to gage interest in attracting a team to Los Angeles.
An AEG source indicated on Friday that the group is actually in contact with more than the five teams cited by Leiweke. Those clubs are getting monthly briefings from AEG on the progress of the downtown project.
At a certain point, AEG's target list is just the entire NFL — especially when "getting monthly briefings from AEG" could just mean that the company is spamming owners' in-boxes with news about their stadium plans. (It doesn't help the story's credibility that it was reported by a site that can't spell the word "gauge.") Still, it'll no doubt get people freaking out in more cities than the original five now, which is no doubt why AEG rushed to leak the news after Leiweke left out teams like the Buffalo Bills in his original statement.
January 06, 2010
Roski: L.A. wants Bills, Jaguars
Developer Ed Roski's Majestic Realty has narrowed down its wish list of teams to relocate to its planned L.A.-area stadium, with managing partner John Semcken now saying the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars are at the top of the relocation list.
"Jacksonville and Buffalo are two teams in very, very small markets," Semcken told the Associated Press. "They are teams that have either outdated stadiums or are having trouble filling their stadiums or both." He added that Majestic won't contact the San Francisco 49ers, San Diego Chargers or Minnesota Vikings as long as they're pursuing stadium plans of their own — which is probably just fine with those teams' owners, as they'll only want to use L.A. as a bogeyman to help in their hometown stadium demands (or, at most, as a fallback in case those stadium plans fall through).
Of course, market size hasn't generally been a prime consideration in the NFL, since so much of its revenue comes from national TV contracts and the like, not local sources — which is how L.A. wound up with no teams in the first place, for that matter, since a revenue-packed (for the time, anyway) stadium in middle-sized St. Louis was more appealing than a less-snazzy one in the nation's second largest city. That may change a smidge under the new revenue sharing rules, but not a ton, so it's unlikely that either the Bills or the Jaguars will be leaping at this opportunity unless Roski shows them some serious coin in terms of stadium revenue that they'll be able to get at the new digs.
And that likely means luring two teams to spread out the construction costs a bit, which means getting two owners to stop just using Roski for leverage and actually agree to move to L.A., at least one of whom would have to sell majority ownership to Roski since that's what he's insisting on ... all of which is to say, just because Roski has filled out his Christmas card list, don't expect to see flying reindeer in the immediate future.
December 03, 2009
Bills in Toronto: Shopkeepers moan, Canadians yawn
The Buffalo Bills are playing the second in their series of five "home" games in Toronto tonight, which means it's time for the New York Times to dust off the perennial story about how losing a team is bad for local businesses. Writes Times reporter Ken Belson:
There is no accurate tally of the money spent in the days leading up to Bills home games, but one thing is clear. The team's decision to play eight home games in Toronto over five years hurts an array of local businesses.
"It stinks," said Amy Morgan, the owner of Tailgaters Bar & Grill, which makes about 70 percent of its monthly sales on game days, when 10 workers are employed. "They're taking revenue away."
Belson goes on to note the number of lost hotel room rentals to visiting teams, and the "thousands" of out-of-town visitors (ironically, many of them from Toronto) that normally come to Buffalo on game days. He makes no mention, though, of the fact that presumably most local Bills fans are still spending their money in town this weekend — though it's more likely dispersed at sports bars and restaurants throughout the city rather than in the few stadium-side businesses Belson spoke to. But then, you really can't expect much economic rigor from an article with lines like: "Based on huge piles of empty cans strewn across parking lots near the stadium, beer sales also take a hit when the Buffalo area loses a game."
Meanwhile, the Buffalo News reports on what should be a bigger story: Despite assumptions that Toronto is a burgeoning market that could ultimately lure the Bills to relocate, there are plenty of cheap tickets still available for tonight's game, and one Canadian columnist has called it "a sports marketing disaster of epic proportions." Whether this is a function of Canadian dispassion for the NFL or the gimmicky nature of hosting one Bills game a year — Toronto Sun columnist Ken Fidlin called it "like renting somebody else's kids just so you can enjoy Christmas morning" — isn't entirely clear, but it'd seem a topic more worthy of the Paper of Record's time than counting beer cans.
October 07, 2009
L.A. developers target six (or seven) NFL teams
Majestic Realty stadium czar John Semcken has officially announced his hit list for NFL franchises to lure to Los Angeles, and it looks like the L.A. Times guessed right:
Semcken said new talks would begin after the Super Bowl in February, and may involve the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Buffalo Bills, the Minnesota Vikings, the St. Louis Rams, the Chargers and the Oakland Raiders.
The San Francisco 49ers could also be pursued if a vote for a new stadium in Santa Clara fails.
Semcken said a new stadium could open in 2013, but a team could be relocated as early as next year or the year after, playing at a temporary site for the first couple of years.
In related news, Majestic owner Ed Roski has lost $1 billion of his $2.5 billion net worth in the last year, according to Forbes, thanks to the California real estate crash. Stadium consultant Marc Ganis calls this "significant"; Majestic says it's just a flesh wound.