By Kyle Silagyi / Billswire.usatoday.com
Despite having one of the NFL’s most impassioned and ardent fan bases, the Bills’ long-term feasibility in Buffalo has always been questioned.
National media members have long pondered the practicability of an NFL franchise in Western New York. With proverbial white whales like Toronto, London, and (once) Los Angeles in need of professional football teams, many wondered if a city with a metro population of just 1.1 million actually needed an NFL franchise.
In 2012, an eventual Bills relocation did not seem like a possibility.
It was an inevitability.
Team representatives made that point clear while negotiating a stadium lease with Erie County late that year. In his new book Beyond the X’s and O’s, county executive Mark Poloncarz explains that the Bills fought for the right to cancel the lease at any time, paving a well-constructed and shiny path to relocation if needed.
“When it came down to the right to terminate, they did say something that surprised us: they wanted the right to terminate immediately at any time during the new lease’s term,” Poloncarz wrote. “We knew the team wanted to keep in the lease agreement the right to move upon sale, but we assumed there would be a locked-in period similar to the 1998 lease in which the team could not terminate the lease and relocate until at least the sixth year of the lease agreement.
“All I could imagine was Mr. [Ralph] Wilson dying in the first year of the new lease, the team being sold to an out-of-town owner, and then being moved prior to the next season.”
Poloncarz also tweeted that “the team’s representatives expected it to be sold and moved” after the passing of Ralph Wilson, the Bills’ longtime owner who brought the team to Buffalo in 1960.
Poloncarz tweeted, “Mr. Wilson committed to keeping the team here but there was no commitment after his death and the team’s representatives expected it to be sold and moved. That is why we fought so hard for a strong non-relocation agreement, thereby keeping the #Bills in Buffalo.”
Ultimately, the immediate termination clause was kept out of negotiations. The Bills signed a ten-year lease with Erie County in December 2012, locking them into the then-38-year-old Ralph Wilson Stadium for an additional decade.
Included in the agreement was a $400 million dollar relocation penalty, a fee that would drop to just $29 million after the seventh year of the lease.
It does not look as though the franchise ultimately will pay the lessened relocation fee, however. Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula purchased the Bills after Wilson’s passing in 2014, affirming the team’s future in Buffalo.
Late last year, Pegula hired CAA Icon to conduct a “comprehensive study” of stadium options, an analysis that will determine the best course of action for the Bills regarding a new or renovated venue.