Bills game in Toronto? Fine – I want a Raptors 3-pack in return

I actually picked up on this story last night… Illuzzi’s site no less, and took it with a grain of salt since it was on, well, Illuzzi.

But lo and behold, this story has legs, and looks like the Bills want to stage not only a preseason game up at Rogers Centre but a 2009 regular season game as well.

From the way the sainted Scott Berchtold is coming across, it seems that the Bills are fine with it.

In a statement, a Bills spokesman said the team plans to “increase its focus on the northern sector of its market” by playing a regular-season game in Toronto. The Canadian fan base, spokesman Scott Berchtold wrote, has led to the Bills’ recent sellout streak, which enabled home games to be televised in the Western New York market.

Oh really Scott? Well you guys opened a ticket office in Toronto and that bombed, didn’t it? Have you ever opened your arms and your pressbox towards the Canadian media and asked them to come and cover games? Have you ever gotten a real group sales effort going north of the border, calling clubs and organizations to buy blocks of tickets? Have you ever thought of setting up a dedicated themed area in the parking lot for Canadians and offering prizes and contests to make them feel welcome? Have you ever thought of doing something creative with your concessions menu, perhaps adding Canadian microbrews and food specials such as Pizza Pizza and Poutine to the mix? Did you ever have any “at par” days back when the US dollar fetched a loonie and a half?

The Bills covet Canada now? Boy we sure couldn’t tell in the old days when now dead Bills hatchet man Vincent Tobia ran around town suing tavern owners who had the audacity to put blacked out games on their TV sets via the dish. Oh he got huge settlements for the Old Geezer and fattened his wallet as well. But he did hit one roadblock – he could not “get” the bars in Fort Erie who were showing the games, he could not interfere with the internal laws of another sovereign nation. But not for lack of trying.

Ah, but that was then, and this is now, so let’s take a prized home game and move it up to Toronto. THAT will solve everything. THAT will open up the Canadian market to beef up those season ticket purchases and snap up those remaining suites and club suites. Sure. OK. Whatever.

Kevin at Bfloblog is spot on with this point..

And I’m sure it’s just the cynic in me that believes that the Bills and the NFL are just sowing the seeds for a team to move to Toronto. Unfortunately, that team may just be the Bills. Not that I believe that Ralph Wilson will ever sell, but making the Canadian market a possibility sure does open up more potential bidders for Mr. Wilson’s estate.

Well here’s my take… we have paid and paid and paid to keep and enhance this facility so that the Bills can remain in Buffalo, and it’s not like there are oceans of empty seats. We do sell out these games. Furthermore, we taxpayers just paid out even more to fund their new scoreboard and ribbon board enhancements. Nobody cut a check to Golisano to do the same at HSBC Arena, yet it seems OK that we can continue to enrich the Old Geezer.

As a taxpayer, in return for my funding of this team, I get this benefit – the economic impact of hosting 10 home games a season at Old Geezer Stadium. Take away one or more of those games, and the cost to this community runs into the millions – the loss of sales tax revenue, bed tax revenue, and the multiplier effect of food, merchandise, hotel rooms, restaurants and everything else that is involved with the staging of one NFL game. Toronto wins, we get nothing. That is unacceptable.

So you want to take away one NFL game from the taxpayers of Erie County? Fine… then I ask only that the NBA Toronto Raptors shift three regular season home games to HSBC Arena in exchange. Oh, and one of those games has to be vs the Knicks. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander, and I am hoping that our politicians and leaders don’t roll over and accept this proposal without examining every angle and impact first.