The Bills franchise ownership is getting a new stadium.
The National Football League’s Buffalo Bills’ business is opening its 2023 training camp part of the season in Pittsford, New York and the team is still called the Buffalo Bills and the team’s stadium is in Orchard Park outside of Buffalo. The football business is getting a new stadium built in Orchard Park and it is one of the most heavily subsidized stadium deals in history with New York taxpayers on a local and on a state level putting at least $850 million into the venue construction. Apparently, lawmakers in the state capital of Albany and in western New York had no choice. They had to pay for a new stadium. New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul said in 2022 that people in San Diego reached out to Bills’ owner Terry Pegula about the possibility of moving the business to that city which lost an NFL team. Now the Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz has backed up Hochul’s 2022 claim.
Poloncarz said, “I don’t think the Pegulas would have built the stadium for themselves here in Western New York if we told them to go pound salt. I think they would have moved their team, because the history of the NFL is that’s what happens. Some other community would have (said). Welcome to San Diego. Welcome to Austin. Here’s your brand new stadium.” Poloncarz said getting the stadium built was “priority one” however he would have let the Pegulas leave western New York “if they came back and came up with such a ridiculous number that the county couldn’t afford, then I would have walked away. It would have been a tough decision, but I just can’t give them a blank check.” The Pegulas did get as close as possible to a blank check. Small market Buffalo retains an NFL franchise, all it took was a lot of money.
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