A lot of people forget that the Bills consistently fill a 76,000 seat stadium, with plenty of luxury suites, at ticket prices far from the lowest in the league. If they moved to Toronto, they'd have to figure out a way to get the same or more revenue in US dollars from a fan base who's dollar's now trading at 80 cents to the US buck, and a stadium with fewer luxury boxes, built for baseball, and only a little over 50,000 available seats. Yep, that's 2/3 the seat capacity, 2/3 the number of skyboxes, and a team in a league with no north-of-the-border history and not much of a north-of-the-border fan base (CFL teams outdraw NFL broadcasts in Canadian viewership). And there will NOT be a new larger stadium built for any NFL franchise any time soon...Toronto passed up an almost sure shot at the Olympics in 2008, 2012 or 2016 because it wouldn't commit to a big new stadium project, so why would anyone think the Bills could persuade them to do what the Olympics could not? In addition, Toronto is historically a hockey and baseball town to begin with. Put it all together and Toronto as a new home for the Bills is a loser, not just long term, but probably in the immediate term. The value of the franchise drops by a third the moment they drive up the moving vans...and it throws away a loyal, stable and lucrative fan base in Buffalo and Rochester that made the Bills one of the ten most profitable franchises in the NFL for a VERY uncertain future. No businessman with a sane brain would make that move away from Buffalo to Toronto. Of course, given what we have learned from the Wall Street debacle about what business people will do in search of a short term score, sanity can't be presumed...
But if not Toronto, where else could the Bills go?
LA is years away from having a stadium remotely suitable for an NFL franchise, and even less likely to build one now since public money will be needed and the state is broke with LA county not far from it. Mexico City? Per capita income isn't sufficient to pay Every other major city in the US that could support an NFL franchise either already has one, has no stadium big enough to hold one and none on the drawing board, or is too much of a hotbed of college sports to give the NFL priority. In the case of San Antonio, its biggest stadium has half the seating capacity of the Ralph. Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas are so exclusively tuned to college football in the autumn that no major league sport, except the NHL in Columbus, even has a toehold. The one market that could support another team and actually has a stadium in place right now is New York City. The Giants and Jets will never let a third team into the market. Plus, both Shea Stadium and the old Meadowlands stadium are about to go under the wrecking ball to be replaced by a baseball-only park in Queens and a new Giants/Jets stadium in north Jersey.
Maybe the Bills are a team that wants to move either before or after Ralph Wilson passes on. But they are, in economic terms, all dressed up with no financially viable place to go other than the place where they already are. It'll be interesting to see if they figure that out, or learn it the hard way through a move that fails.
Meanwhile, if I were the owners of WGR I'd start making my plans for a football-free future. Can a sports station survive when only the NHL is left in town? If so, what do you emphasize, what's your ongoing story during the times when hockey's not being played between May and October? Can a sports radio station survive when there isn't activity on the major league level for months at a time? That's something stations like WFAN in NYC, WSCR in Chicago and Fan590 in Toronto never have to cope with. If UB continues its rise and becomes a consistent bowl contender and even a BCS bowl participant on a consistent basis that'll solve the problem. But that's years away from becoming a constant part of the western NY sports fan's consciousness even if it is beginning to happen.
.