Buffalo Bills: Relocating to Toronto? or Simply Regionalizing..

The NFL franchised Buffalo Bills have recently requested permission to play one pre-season and at least one regular season game in Toronto. The Bills continue to deny that the franchise will be moved; instead their reasons for heading north are to expand their market base outside Western New York.

An estimated 15,000 Canadian fans are already attending Bills home games in Orchard Park, NY, so this expansion could potentially increase their current fan base by an even larger margin. The Buffalo Bills are looking to play a 'home game' in Toronto both during the pre-season and the regular season. If this deal goes through, games could be played in Ontario as soon as the Summer of 2008.

Toronto is Canada's largest city and lies a mere 90 miles from Buffalo. The games would be played at the Rogers Center which is a stadium with a retractable roof in downtown Toronto. The stadium is the current home to the Toronto Blue Jays as well as the Canadian Football League Toronto Argonauts.

So what's stopping this from happening? The Bills need approval to play their home games anywhere other than at Ralph Wilson Stadium due to specifications in their leasing contract. Their current contract is set to end in 2012. If permission is granted from Ralph Wilson, the Bills will also need approval from the NFL, but this shouldn't pose too much of a problem seeing as NFL games have previously been played outside of the United States.

While the plans for this are still in motion, the Bills franchise insists that this request is merely a regionalization strategy and not the first steps towards the relocation of the Buffalo Bills. Only time will tell as to whether or not the Buffalo Bills remain the Buffalo Bills.