The Bills technically haven’t threatened to move the team. However, they believe that their commitment to not moving should have tangible value in stadium talks.
Via Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, one of the two arguments the team will make in seeking “major taxpayer support” is that “simply keeping the team in Buffalo when more attractive options exist should be valued as a contribution to the region.”
As Fischer notes, it’s a risky strategy. The threat to move is implied in the argument. Besides, what are the attractive options? If the politicians respond with that question, it becomes essentially an invitation to go out and find them.
Ownership also will argue, per Fischer, that a new stadium in Buffalo doesn’t represent an investment that will pay for itself, given that there isn’t new revenue in the area that will suddenly flow into a new stadium with more bells and whistles and whatnot.
Although Fischer also reports that the Bills “never asked” for full taxpayer funding, it’s clear that they want plenty of cash to come from the public coffers. And their arguments lead back to the two basic realities of stadium financing.
First, if the current city won’t offer major taxpayer funding, another city quite possibly will. Two, if ownership will be making a major contribution of its own, it will prefer to do so in a market where a greater return on the investment will be realized.
Fischer calls the possibility of relocation “under-baked,” and he’s right. But the bun is definitely in the oven. The back-and-forth of negotiation could result in other cities making offers for the team -- indeed, to make their argument credible, the Bills may have to solicit those offers in order to prove that there really are attractive options.
At the end of the day, the question is whether the best offer meets ownership’s minimum expectations. If so, a deal will be done. If not, the dough of an “under-baked” relocation will rise into something that could entail a stadium in a more lucrative market and/or a new home that places huge value on the mere presence of an NFL team.
