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The Nature of the Experiment

By Stephen Johns

2008_08_15goalposts.jpgToronto’s latest dalliance with the National Football League is underway—and while yesterday’s Buffalo Bills/Pittsburgh Steelers game was a predictably tepid affair, we’re guessing the organizers will be reasonably happy with the way things played out.
First, the game. Preseason NFL games are frequently dire, and yesterday’s wasn’t much of an exception. Buffalo rookie Leodis McKelvin briefly brought the Rogers Centre to life with a 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, but for the most part the bipartisan crowd of 48,434 was surprisingly restrained (especially by the Bills’ usual standards: Buffalo is notorious, even amongst NFL teams, for its rowdy home crowds). Still, rumours of “thousands” of unsold tickets seemed unsubstantiated from our vantage point. Rogers Centre wasn’t packed—but we’re guessing there will be a bigger (and much more vocal) crowd on hand when the Bills come back in December to do it for real.
Judging whether the “Toronto Bills Series” will be a success based on a single preseason game would be pointless, and is best left to people whose job descriptions require such undertakings. Still, we’re going to assume Ted Rogers is feeling good about the experiment so far. His eponymous stadium was full-ish. The two teams’ marquee players, the Ben Roethlisbergers and the Marshawn Lynches, made decent (if truncated) showings. And the Rogers/NFL marketing machine, which shifted into high gear with Wednesday’s tailgate party in Dundas Square, did a good job of making a meaningless preseason game seem important. In fact, we’re guessing the biggest malcontents will be scalpers. They would’ve struggled to give away tickets to yesterday’s game—which is pretty standard for any preseason contest in any professional sports league.
Thus, Toronto’s most recent NFL experiment has to be considered a qualified success so far. Some of yesterday’s shortcomings (notably wonky stadium production) should be corrected when the Bills come back in December. The seats should be fuller; the scalpers should be happier. And the NFL will be able to gauge whether Toronto is a viable market for a permanent franchise. Based on current evidence, that no longer seems like an outlandish sentiment.
Photo from the official Buffalo Bills website.

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  • David Toronto

    I noticed a number of rows of seats near field level were tarped over with a very large graphic for the Buffalo team. That means many seats couldn’t be used for spectators. Two or three hundred seats were covered in the process.
    Is this a customary practice or just a one-off because of the nature of last night’s game?

  • Stephen Johns

    I *think* (and don’t quote me on this) it’s because those seats would’ve been obstructed by the players’ benches. They do it for Argos games as well: http://www.flickr.com/photos/krazyfoto/655662385/

  • dowlingm

    The local residents might not go for having to have passes to get into their own houses every time the Bills come to town. If Rogers want to bring the NFL to Toronto in a new stadium they should start looking for somewhere else to build it, not rebuilding on the Skydome site.

  • McKingford

    And the NFL will be able to gauge whether Toronto is a viable market for a permanent franchise. Based on current evidence, that no longer seems like an outlandish sentiment.
    Toronto will not be a viable market for a permanent franchise until it builds a football-only NFL approved stadium. The current going rate for one of those is about $1B. So until they find oil under Nathan Philips Square, nobody’s building an NFL stadium in Toronto.
    NFL in Toronto? Never.Gonna.Happen.

  • rek

    I don’t want NFL in Toronto. I’d rather the CFL got more popular (even though I don’t watch it either).

  • Stephen Johns

    The main issue re: a football-only stadium in Toronto is, obviously, where it’d be built. Some people were talking about Downsview Park a while back; that’d be calamitous, obviously, but it shows how difficult it’d be should an NFL team come to pass. As for it “never happening,” I’m inclined to agree–although that said, if people like Ted Rogers are willing to throw stupid amounts of money around, they’ll certainly give the league a reason to think twice. Ultimately, money will take louder than anything else–even common sense.

  • McKingford

    The main issue re: a football-only stadium in Toronto is, obviously, where it’d be built.
    No, the main issue is who would pay for it. Given the NFL mandates on stadia, the only way for anyone to make money on an NFL franchise after plunking down anywhere from $500M to $1B on the actual franchise, is for public financing of a stadium. South of the border, cities still have a bizarre fetish for corporate welfare of this nature. After the Skydome fiasco, I’m pretty certain we’ve weaned ourselves off that. In any event, neither the city or province has a spare $1B to shell out for a facility that would see about 10 games a year. (cf. the difficulty in getting anyone to plunk down a few million for BMO field).