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Why Would Any Radio Station(s) want to carry Buffalo Bills Games?

Revenue is the most logical answer, but how much revenue is generated from broadcasting the Bills?

Being honest, the Bills haven't been a contender team since the four Super Bowl losses in the 1990's.

It's nice that some sports stations do carry other games featuring teams that at least have a shot at a division title or maybe a wild card spot.
 
Why did WGR and the Entercom clusters in Buffalo and Rochester pick up the Bills?

A few reasons;

1)Competitive advantage, at a time when a stressed out Citadel essentially gives up (allowing itself to be devoured by Cumulus) and cedes the battlefield to the much financially healthier Entercom.

2)A belief that better times were ahead for the Bills, making them competitive once more (and thus a bigger ratings and marketing attraction not only on Sunday but with ancillary programming all week long from July to February).

3)If the Bills DO improve, sponsors will want to get on board both for games and that ancillary programming at premium rates.

The gamble isn't ready to pay off this year, but they're probably still hoping that in 2013 or 2014, it will...and continue to pay off during a long playoff run for years thereafter, like it did from 1988 through 1996.
 
Not living there, but I wonder, assuming the answer is "no" here----

Has any major sports team (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB) ever been so bad, or at least unprofitable in radio station owners' eyes, that no games were broadcast on the radio? That is, was there no network or flagship for the team---at least since radio became a major force in the 1940s/50s?

The closest I know is the lack of an English network for the Montreal Expos in 2000 I think Wikipedia said, and all the games could only be heard online. I listened to one of the "goodbyes" after one of the games.....creepy!

cd
 
^ In that case, that's almost as bad as the Expos thing! Of course, there's no hockey anywhere now, but that's beside the point. (An I'm not sure if the Hofstra (or whatever college) station is really that upset about it... And definitely, no profit to be made.... :) )

cd
 
The Bills reportedly extort $4 to 5 million a year for radio broadcast rights in the Buffalo market. Word is Rochester is negotiated separately.

Cumulus walked away because the Bills sucked a lot of revenue out of the till. The lawyers and court will decide whether Cumulus owes $1 million the Bills say they're owed for ancillary programming on Citadel-Cumulus.

Town Square doesn't need the headaches and drag on the bottom line that the Bills radio rights create, so it passed. That left Entercom to dance with the Bills. No other station cluster wanted to pay for the radio rights to the team, so it was a shotgun marriage. Word is the Bills held their nose when they signed the deal with WGR because the station has been a thorn in the Bills side for the last 15 years, going back to Art Wander, Chuck Dickerson and the sportsboys who thought they were Jim Rome, all the way up to the current cast of tormentors, Schopp, Bulldog, Simon and White.

The Bills must be livid that their flagship station holds their feet to the fire when the coaching stinks the joint out and the players can't get the job done. The Bills prefer to be on a music station that doesn't expose the team's warts, rather than a Sports Talk station that does sports talk 24-7. Music stations don't bitch about a perennially bad team that hasn't been to the playoffs in 13 years and hasn't had a winning season since 2004 when they finished 9-7. A losing season takes center stage on a Sports station.

Imagine what goes on behind the scenes between One Bills Drive and Corporate Parkway when Simon & White and Schopp & Porkowski rightly hold the Bills feet to the fire and callers point out the ridiculous coaching errors and inept play calling. WGR pays Bills GM Buddy Nix to do a radio show, but the guy (who sounds like he should have a part in the movie Deliverance) gets bent out of shape when the hosts 'dare' to ask him serious questions. Nix threatened to hang up on Simon & White a week ago because Simon & White asked him tough questions about a coaching change that Nix didn't rightly appreciate.

The Bills are a good fit for WGR, which probably will have a mind blowing Fall book even though the Bills sucked. Whether the ratings translates to revenue is anybody's guess. Word is Entercom didn't give its sales reps any incentive to sell the Bills, so a lot of them concentrated on selling spot radio for Star, Kiss and WBEN.
 
Reality check here, guys. We're not talking about the Montreal Expos here. And we're not talking about the New York Islanders. The Buffalo Bills ARE AN NFL FRANCHISE. We're talking about the kingpin in sports here, guys. The NFL is, if I may borrow a phrase from a local car dealer, HUGE! I can understand why the Cumulus gave up on the Bills. They're a classic rock station. Sports is not their niche. But having the Bills AND Sabres on WGR is a big deal for Entercom, especially when this danged hockey lock-out is resolved. Know this. WGR's fall ratings will be in the 4.5 to 5.5 share range 12+ plus in the Fall Arbitron rankings. That is no small thing for an AM frequency. Yes, the Bills have now missed the playoffs since the end of the 1999 season. But they're still a big deal for Buffalo sports fans. The Bills are not a loss leader for Entercom. For the Jacksonville game, WGR probably ended up as the top rated radio station on that particular Sunday. This is a silly discussion. Having an NFL team on your airwaves generates revenue. There is no question why WGR and Entercom carries the Buffalo Bills. It's because they generate big bucks and give an AM radio station respectable ratings in an era where AM stations are dying. Enough said!
 
BTW, the Cumulus vs. Bills "misunderstanding" was settled months ago. Cumulus has a suite at the stadium.
 
The Bills were expected to and predicted to be much better than they have turned out to be this season. National outlets (ESPN, et al) were drinking the Kool-Aid on this one: most improved defense, much better prospects, bla bla bla.

True, Entercom was the only game in town (pun intended), but I think they were told and or believed they would be broadcasting the games of an actual competitor. Instead, things are looking to be worse than last year. I don't see the Bills adding another "W" for the rest of the season, unless the Dolphins and Jets "suck worse." Or maybe they'll surprise me and go 6 and 10--again.
 
"That's a longer term strategy for a team whose home city could change when the team owner passes, which could happen two seconds from now."

The likelihood of the Bills leaving the Buffalo area any timethis decade is approximately zero. Consider this;

1)You need a regional fan base that can consistently draw over 70,000 people to attend any game being played by a reasonably compettive team. Either one market with over 2 million population base, or two or more markets each with over a million metro population within 65 miles of the stadium, will get you there.

2) You need a stadium able to accomodate all those 70,000 people that team draws each game, and it needs luxury seats and boxes to go with it, plus adequate parking and highway access.

3) You need enough decent size media markets within a 90 minute drive of the stadium to offer a good network with revenue potential, or one BIG market at the heart of the team's fan base.

There are roughly 36 North American markets that coukd conceivably support an NFL franchise under these criteria,, including Buffalo. What about the four others? Let's look at why each of them don't, and can't, pose a threat to take on a team like the Bills even if the Bills want to move...

1)Portland, Oregon; No suitable stadium with seating capacity and luxury boxes, and none in the works.
2)Los Angeles; lack of a suitable facility, like Portland, plus a record of past failure to support not just one, but two different NFL franchises in the past 20 years.
3)Toronto; No stadium able to come within 25,000 seats of the Ralph, plus lukewarm fan response to the one or two games a year the Bills DO play there at the under-sized (for the NFL) Rogers Center.
4)San Antonio; a market with some potential, but its biggest stadium (the Alamo Dome) has only HALF the seating capacity of the Ralph.

So there's no realistic place the franchise can move at any time this decade. If you take on the Bolls as a broadcast partner you can expect them to stay put.
 
"Imagine what goes on behind the scenes between One Bills Drive and Corporate Parkway when Simon & White and Schopp & Porkowski rightly hold the Bills feet to the fire and callers point out the ridiculous coaching errors and inept play calling."

Who is Porkowski? I assume it is Chris Parker. Is that his real name? If so, I never knew that.

A nice Polish lad with the nickname "Bulldog." Only in Buffalo!
 
Bob1370 said:
So there's no realistic place the franchise can move at any time this decade. If you take on the Bolls as a broadcast partner you can expect them to stay put.
I don't know about Portland or Toronto, but I'd bet a billion dollars the NFL is eager to get into either LA or San Antonio asap. And since it also doesn't want to modify the 32 team alignment soon, it will look for the first opportunity to help an underperforming franchise get to either of those two cities. An LA team can play in the Rose Bowl until there's a stadium deal, and a San Antonio team can wait out a stadium by playing at the Alamodome. I put the Bills' survival in Buffalo past 2015 at no better than 50-50.
 
I agree with "7 & 7" on L.A. The NFL has pretty much stated that it wants at least one franchise in the nation's 2nd largest market. True, L.A. had 2 NFL franchises back in the last century but the current NFL is so popular and there's so much $ in the L.A. area that you'd have to think there will be at least one franchise headed there by the end of the decade, if not sooner. Who knows if the Bills have a plan on place after Mr. Wilson departs? On the other hand if the Bills continue to play like they have in the last 13 years I don't know how much they'd be missed. It's sad that it's come to this.
 
The Bills have a plan after Mr. Wilson passes. Sell the team. According to Forbes, the base asking price will be about $500 million. Bills fans who want the team to stay in Buffalo will turn to people like Sabres owner Terry Pegula or the Jacobs family. Money talks and we all know what walks.

The second largest media market in the US is without an NFL franchise. Anybody who believes the NFL doesn't have a plan for filling the gap in LA is miscalculating. On the other hand, politically, the NFL doesn't want to tangle with New York Senator Chuck Schumer or Governor Andrew Cuomo. Schumer sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is the Chair of the Senate's Subcommittee on Antitrust. The NFL, which has a full plate of legal issues, doesn't want to open the antitrust box.

Cuomo isn't going to allow the NFL, Wilson or the next buyer of the Bills to burden the state with exorbitant stadium expenditures. Cuomo has his eyes on 2016, when he's likely to run as a "fiscally responsible democrat who worked with the legislature to straighten out NY state's fiscal problems." Whether Cuomo makes it through the grueling primary process is anybody's guess, but as it relates to the Bills, he probably wants them to stay because he believes keeping the Bills in Buffalo will get votes in WNY, but won't get sucked into a deal that makes him or the state come out on the short end of the stick.

Somewhere in this vortex created by the Bills can be found the fans, pundits, board posters, media, television, radio and the advertisers whom the stations call upon to help foot the fees for broadcast rights. I'd like the Bills to stay. Reality says there are far more powerful forces at work. What will be will be. And life will go on. "Within you and without you," as George Harrison sang.
 
"Maybe LA had trouble supporting two teams because there WERE two teams. They divided their fanbase by teasing them with two simultaneously."

The two teams (Rams and Raiders), when they were both in SoCal, were nevertheless about 60 miles apart in different counties.

And for a long period of time after the Raiders went back to the Bay in the early 90s, the Rams had the market to themselves and still didn't get it done. SoCal north of San Diego just didn't support the NFL starting in the late 60s, period. If a new team or a move-in team comes there, within a decade it'll probably be on the move again and either become a second team in Chicago or a third team in the greater New York area.

But the bottom line is, any team will do financially better staying in Buffalo than going someplace else with no real home of its own for years.
 
I agree with the another poster...this discussion is ridiculous. For radio to survive, you need content. This is passionate, exclusive content. WGR has sports content no one else has - even TV does not have local broadcast Bills games, they are national.
 
Bob1370 you are in denial.
The team will be gone in 5 years (or less)
I do not want them to move either, but Cumulus has
Mike florio (?from Pro football talks) and he has explained
The how and the why ...why keep a team here when
In LA the price is easily doubled...

He further supported with behind the scene details...
The AEG (?) CEO is buying/selling his company which
Makes it easier to move, again not my story... So I apologize
I am unclear of all the details.... But sad to say,

Bills will be gone.

if old man Wilson, while alive, signed something ..okay
But until that happens ...start a countdown, as this maybe
The last of the teams history in our city.
 
Ps I am typing on an iPad.....don't like it
-like radio, football is a business.
Be nice if a radio station, played your favorite songs...
And not a corporate playlist.. Or did a remote for a cool factor,
But they don't...there is always a rea$on for their motives.

Same with football....be great if the team, said, lets lower the
Costs, (tickets, parking, free food) and we will keep the team here and . . . .

But $$$$ is what makes football a nine billion dollar industry..
 
Ratings-more this year because of no hockey,
But I personally believe the Revenue will be a bigger
Impact...as the nfL I am certain subsidized most of
The cost/revenue and capital (play60), Sunday and Monday
Night football..and countless spots on wgr from football
That will be gone after the bills leave...
 
Well .....here is some thing to wonder,
After the bills leave, who is to say 'gr doesn't get a
Another team .?? No not buffalo, but

They can freely cover another team...now, they won't
Randomly take ...Denver, or Houston but what about
This area embracing the giants..the other ny team..
(As the jets/or giants) ...I would think the station, wgr
And this area would be supportive of the giants,

Thoughts?
 
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