Treasurer Oranthol James Simpson...

Count me among those that dont think the Bills we be leaving Buffalo. Buffalo is just to piss ass poor for the regional power brokers in Buffalo and Rochester and if they play their cards properly southern Ontario too allow an internationally branded sports team leave.

Plus it will leave NYS without having a single team within NYS.

Somehow we let the trains and the ports and the aircraft manufacturers, and the steel mills and the chemical plants etc all slip away rather silently but as we have seen...the Bills will not go silently....so the question becomes not so much whether they will leave or stay but what package must be put together to make it worthwhile for them to stay and I honestly dont think that much thought has been put into that question YET! Im not even sure that the Bills have a full picture of what they need in order to stay. However I am confident that when the crisis hits such a picture will be drawn and in the end...a package will be made allowing them to stay.

It may even require concessions from Albany that will finally allow Buffalo to grow enough to support the team. imagine if that were a possible outcome.

PS personally I dont think Toronto wants the Bills for a permanent team. Canadians have their own Canadian Football League and Soccer League....they dont need the Bills. That being said...there are Canadians that like US Football....and while torontonians dont want to support both the American Football League and the Canadian Football League.....there are enough fans in Southern Ontario to enjoy the Bills and be convinced to visit Buffalo, especially if enticed by the Bills playing in their local such as Toronto or Hamilton.

While I dont know whether or not the Bills will be here in 5 or 10 years, what I do know, is that Bill's hope wont happen, and it is simple to see why:

Ralph Wilson bought the Bills at $25,000, the team is now estimated at a value greater than 650 million (there are many different estimates, but the actual number is unimportant). IF Wilson were to sell any portion of his team today he would be forced to pay capital gains tax on that sale. Then at Wilson's death that value would be taxed again via the estate tax.

However, if Wilson holds the team until he dies, he pays only the estate tax- its complicated by essentially once the team leave's Wilson's estate its base value for purposes of capital gains treatment is the current value of the team.

My point is essentially this: If Wilson sells before death, his estate will be significantly devalued due to the capital gains tax, and his heirs will have to pay a second tax on whatever is left. It makes no sense for him to sell anything- which is why he is adamant that he will die as owner of the Buffalo Bills- and which is why if we, as a community, wish to attempt to keep the Bills- we have to figure this into our plans.

T BONE is the first and only person to hit the nail on the head... And he forgot to mention that the Bills, if sold after his death, fiscally cannot survive the debt service that would be due on a loan of $650 million plus. The hnumbers just dont make sense, and I love Buffalo and our Bills! Im not trying to be negative here Bill, but any businessman can make sense that the financial figures when accurately accounted for, just dont add up to keep the team here after Mr Wilson dies... which hopefully wont happen for 20 more years!!!

TBone and WeLovePanos,

Sounds like a lot of fuzzy math to me. I wouldn't go off your analysis to save my life.

I am sure that there is quite a bit going on behind closed doors that the public cannot be aware of at this point.

Our Luxury boxes sell for $50,000 to $100,000 and are not sold out... Large markets get between $250,000 and upwards of $1 million... their revenue far exceeds ours... Thats how debt service is paid

DRL, I am not saying there are not possibilities to keep the team in Buffalo, far from it, I do not totally agree with WeLovePanos because we do not know the debt/equity position of any potential buyer or group of buyers; and it is possible the Wilson could negotiate some sort of Right of First refusal to a certain buyer based on contingencies....

My point, which I thought I had made clear is only that the team will not be sold prior to his death due to the tax consequences, and to increase the odds of keeping the team in Buffalo we must be aware of that, and plan for it. Nothing- short of an act of congress eliminating the capital gains tax, or somehow exempting Wilson from it will make the sale of the team prior to his death feasible.

TBone, you are right. We don't know the debt/equity position of the potential buyers or the financial packaging that would come from the county/state. Who thought they could keep a team in Green Bay (even after they temporarily moved a few games to Milwaukee).

4 things we do know:

1. The Bills are profitable 2. There are teams that are bringing in less revenue 3. The Bills have a steady loyal fan base that buys tickets even when they are losing 4. State and local govt has said it is prepared to keep the team here (this has been the biggest problem historically when teams have moved)

Its too early to start spreading doom and gloom like WeLovePanos or WGR 550 (oops, did I say that)

As a Canadian supporter of the Bills, I hope the Bills stay in Buffalo forever. Mr. Rogers is trying to bring them to his neighbourhood but they do not belong in Toronto. Attending a professional sporting event in Toronto is like having to go to downtown T.O. for a dentist appointment. Tailgate? What's that? T.O. just has no heart and soul compared to Buffalo.

sancor says, "As a Canadian supporter of the Bills, I hope the Bills stay in Buffalo forever. Mr. Rogers is trying to bring them to his neighbourhood but they do not belong in Toronto. Attending a professional sporting event in Toronto is like having to go to downtown T.O. for a dentist appointment. Tailgate? What's that? T.O. just has no heart and soul compared to Buffalo."

This hits the nail on the head. Yes, I know it's all about the money from suits purchasing luxury boxes and suites. But without the heart and soul you have nothing. There's a reason LA, the largest TV market in the country, doesn't have a team. They don't care.

sancor says, "As a Canadian supporter of the Bills, I hope the Bills stay in Buffalo forever. Mr. Rogers is trying to bring them to his neighbourhood but they do not belong in Toronto. Attending a professional sporting event in Toronto is like having to go to downtown T.O. for a dentist appointment. Tailgate? What's that? T.O. just has no heart and soul compared to Buffalo."

This hits the nail on the head. Yes, I know it's all about the money from suits purchasing luxury boxes and suites. But without the heart and soul you have nothing. There's a reason LA, the largest TV market in the country, doesn't have a team. They don't care.

The Bills belong and will remain in Buffalo.

VGS Its that kind of attitude that has lead to decades of economic decline in this region.

Buffalo needs an all weather stadium. Cities with more benign climates have all weather stadiums. If there was a domed stadium more people would be willing to pay more to attend a game.

T.O.'s Globe & Mail wrote a year ago "It has been widely speculated that Toronto could get a team through franchise relocation, with the Buffalo Bills the most obvious possibility, because of an aging owner and its small market." Nothing's changed on that statement, nor will it likely for some time.

There's three separate T.O. billionaires have come in the openly mentioned reach for the Bills; topping the list is Fred Rogers of Rogers Media (known to be more zealous than Rupert Murdoch --always get what he wants).

We (Buffalo) don't want the team to go-- and would of course love to see Kelly head up a successful buy-out. But think about somehow working with Toronto--(couple other other move options are CA and Mexico City)...

The Bills went from a $450 million dollar team around a year ago to a $560 million value more recently--and will surely continue increasing in value. I wonder if anyone agrees with my hunch that Ralph Wilson would probably sell part or all for significantly less than the highest speculated value in order to keep the team here? Sure, he'll want at least 600 million-- he's no fool, but he wouldn't go reaching anywhere for say a billion, do you think? I just don't think he'd do that.

I base that hunch on the fact that at his age his legacy is all about the past 40+ years here. If he were a younger man and wanted out-- he'd probably get a billion for the team from "someone somewhere" (who given a few more years would likely recoup their initially overpaid investment).

Just another question for finance-related Bills followers--- what's the best guess of the Bills's dollar value in say 10 years, given historical value increases? I'd say skightly upwards of a billion. Add another quarter to half billion if it were in a bigger market. Agree? Disagree?

Buffalo needs a new convention center and a new stadium , now is the time to start planning for a joint facility like Indianapolis, where a new covered stadium is used to proved additional space for their new convention center.

RON R hits it on the head... The team is currently profitable because there is no debt... A new owner will not be able to pay debt service with the currrent revenues... The numbers just dont add up