Buffalo Bills and CFL Both Lose

Is Football not just for Fans anymore?

It seems today that all pro sports are not as fan friendly anymore. Sports today seem to go after the mighty dollar and leaving the average fan out in the cold.

Take for example the news of the Buffalo Bills who are playing 8 games over the next five years in the city of Toronto. The Buffalo Bills who originally played in the now defunct AFL will make a whopping $78 million dollars from this deal. With the average price of $200.00 a ticket and a guarantee to sell out, it only makes sense for them economically to play games in Toronto. But what does this tell the average football fan from Buffalo? With average ticket prices at around $54.00 at Ralph Wilson stadium are they saying to Buffalo fans that if they are not willing to pay more money to see their home team play that they may be in danger of losing the team? That seems to be the general consensus.

However Buffalo fans won’t be the only losers if the Buffalo Bills make an eventual move to Toronto. The Toronto Argonauts of the CFL (Canadian Football League) will lose out as well. Some say that the two leagues could co-exist, however that won’t be the case. The NFL with is huge marketing machine world wide success would not only dwarf the Toronto Argos and the CFL but it would push them right out of the Market.

The CFL can’t compete with the NFL on that level. Its not the quality of the game that it cant compete with, it’s the power the NFL has with corporate sponsorship, Television revenue and overall excitement. The CFL for those of you who are not familiar with the league, operates out of eight cities (Ottawa coming back in 2010 to add a ninth team) across the country. Its rules vary from the NFL, three downs instead of four, 12 men on the field and a wider and longer field. The Grey Cup (The CFL version of the Superbowl) has been played for since 1909 and is the most watched sporting event in Canada. But the CFL is a gate driven league; it depends on its fan base in order for it to as well as its television contract and corporate sponsorship to remain stable. With the Invasion of the NFL into Canada’s largest market the CFL is surely to lose its corporate sponsorship and its TV contract or at least diminish them to the capacity to make the league no longer financially viable.

The CFL would eventually fold and be forgotten and that would be a shame. The CFL is the one league that still provides a high quality of excitement for its fans and for a reasonable price. Going to the CFL does not cost you a mortage payment as the other major league sports do nowadays.

So the losers here would be all the Canadian cities that have a CFL team as well as Buffalo, just by making the move up North the NFL would cause a domino effect on one of the oldest sports in Canadian History.