The
Bills Toronto Series is a five-year deal consisting of a series of
National Football LeagueThe National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
games featuring the
Buffalo BillsThe Buffalo Bills are a professional football team based in Buffalo, New York. They are currently members of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
played at the
Rogers CentreRogers Centre is a multi-purpose stadium, in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower, near the shores of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989, it is home to the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League...
in
TorontoToronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
,
OntarioOntario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The series began in the
2008 NFL seasonThe 2008 NFL season was the 89th regular season of the National Football League, themed with the slogan "Believe in Now."Super Bowl XLIII, the league's championship game, was at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida on February 1, 2009, with the Pittsburgh Steelers coming out victorious over the...
and will end during the 2012 NFL season. The Bills are to play eight home games over those five seasons which include one regular-season game each of the 5 years and one pre-season game on the 1st, 3rd and 5th years of the series. This includes the first regular-season NFL game played in Canada which the Bills lost to the
Miami DolphinsThe Miami Dolphins are a Professional football team based in the Miami metropolitan area in Florida. The team is part of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
. The series was conceived by a group that includes Bills owner Ralph Wilson, the late
Ted RogersEdward Samuel "Ted" Rogers, Jr., OC was the President and CEO of Rogers Communications Inc., and the fifth richest person in Canada in terms of net worth. His father Edward S. Rogers, Sr...
of
Rogers CommunicationsRogers Communications Inc. is one of Canada's largest communications companies, particularly in the field of wireless communications, cable television, home phone and internet with additional telecommunications and mass media assets...
and
Larry TanenbaumLawrence "Larry" Tanenbaum is a Canadian businessman who is chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment...
of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.
Background
Although NFL exhibition games have been
played in Canada since 1950The National Football League has long been rumoured to be considering placing one of its franchises in Canada's largest city, Toronto, Ontario....
, it was not until the Bills Toronto Series that a regular-season NFL game was played north of the border, on December 7, 2008. NFL games have been played outside the United States regularly since 2005 with
Fútbol Americano"Fútbol Americano" was the marketing name used for the first-ever National Football League regular season game ever held outside the United States. Played on October 2, 2005 at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the Arizona Cardinals defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 31-14...
(a one-off regular season game in
Mexico CityMexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
) and the 2007 debut of the
NFL International SeriesBeginning with the 2005 season, the National Football League has hosted regular season American football games held outside the United States in a series known as the International Series.-Background:...
, which has promoted regular-season games in
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Both of those events were separate from the Toronto Series, in that the Toronto Series was orchestrated by an individual team while the other regular season games were orchestrated by the league.
Toronto is about 60
miles by air"As the crow flies" or beelining is an idiom for the shortest route between two points; the geodesic distance.An example is the great-circle distance between Key West and Pensacola, at either end of the U.S...
from Buffalo and 86 miles by car via the
Queen Elizabeth WayThe Queen Elizabeth Way, commonly abbreviated as the QEW, is a 400-Series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. The freeway links Buffalo, New York and the Niagara Peninsula with Toronto. It begins at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and travels around the western shore of Lake Ontario, ending...
. Much of
southern OntarioSouthern Ontario is a region of the province of Ontario, Canada that lies south of the French River and Algonquin Park. Depending on the inclusion of the Parry Sound and Muskoka districts, its surface area would cover between 14 to 15% of the province. It is the southernmost region of...
is within the Bills' marketing territory as defined by the NFL. About 10-15,000 attendees (15-20% of the total) at the Bills' home games at
Ralph Wilson StadiumRalph Wilson Stadium is a football stadium, located in the town of Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo, New York. It is the home for the Buffalo Bills, of the NFL...
come from southern Ontario.
Rogers Centre's capacity (54,000 seats) currently is slightly lower than the number of seats for a stadium to be a viable venue for a permanent Toronto team as all other NFL stadiums have at least 60,000 seats as of 2011. It is typically configured at 49,500 seats for
Blue JaysThe Toronto Blue Jays are a professional baseball team located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Blue Jays are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball 's American League ....
baseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, though more were added for the 2008 Bills games for a total of 54,000.
Toronto Series games are the only NFL games not subject to the league's
blackoutBlackout usually relates to the broadcasting of sports events, television programming, that is prohibited in a certain media market.The purpose is theoretically to generate more revenue by obliging certain actions from fans, either by making them buy tickets or watch other games on TV...
restrictions. For instance, the 2010 Toronto Series preseason game had nearly 15,000 available seats but was still seen on television within the stadium's blackout zone.
History
In September 2006, Tanenbaum and Rogers held a news conference, where the two men discussed bringing an NFL franchise to Toronto. Neither specified whether a potential Toronto team would be a new franchise or a team moved from another city. Tanenbaum was quoted as saying, “I’m highly interested in an NFL team and Ted is, too. We hope to pursue it more rigorously as soon as the NFL gives us the word.”
In October 2007, Bills owner Ralph Wilson petitioned NFL owners to allow his team to play one “home” game per year (over five years) in Canada. NFL commissioner
Roger GoodellRoger S. Goodell is the Commissioner of the National Football League , having been chosen to succeed the retiring Paul Tagliabue on August 8, 2006. He was chosen over four finalists for the position, winning a close vote on the fifth ballot before being unanimously approved by acclamation of the...
approved the plan, which also allowed the Bills to also play a pre-season “home” game at Roger Centre every other year of the Series (2008, 2010, 2012) for a total of eight games in Toronto. In February 2008, Wilson avoided questions about a possible permanent move for the Bills to Toronto while discussing “high rates” for Series ticket prices. The deal Wilson struck with the Toronto group allows them to bid on and relocate other available NFL franchises up for sale.
Rogers CommunicationsRogers Communications Inc. is one of Canada's largest communications companies, particularly in the field of wireless communications, cable television, home phone and internet with additional telecommunications and mass media assets...
reported a Series payment of
CA$The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
78 million to the Buffalo Bills in their Q1 2008 financial report, which, according to
ForbesForbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
, is more than the team earned (in operating income) in 2006. The series set the record for the largest gate revenue for a single event in the history of the Rogers Centre, at C$8 million, although this was later surpassed by
UFC 129UFC 129: St-Pierre vs. Shields was a mixed martial arts event held by the Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday, April 30, 2011 at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario.-Background:...
.
2008
The
BillsThe 2008 Buffalo Bills season was the 39th season for the team in the National Football League and their 49th season overall. They finished with a record of 7–9 for the third consecutive year...
played two games (one pre-season) in 2008 at Rogers Centre. The pre-season opponent was the
Pittsburgh SteelersThe 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers season was the franchise's 76th season in the National Football League . The season concluded with the team winning Super Bowl XLIII to become the first franchise in the NFL with six Super Bowl titles....
. The Bills defeated the Steelers 24-21 on August 14, 2008. In the regular season, the Bills played (and lost to) the
Miami DolphinsThe 2008 Miami Dolphins season was the organization's 39th season in the National Football League and 43rd overall. During the regular season the Dolphins completed the greatest single-season turnaround in NFL history, going from a 1–15 regular season record in 2007 to an 11–5 record in 2008...
16-3 on December 7 in front of 52,134 in attendance. The Rogers Centre’s roof was closed for the game, which meant the region's normally cold and windy December conditions wouldn’t influence the game. Ticket prices for the Series were announced in May, and averaged C$183 per seat. In Buffalo, Bills tickets averaged C$51 per seat.
2009
The
BillsThe 2009 Buffalo Bills season was the 50th Professional Football season for the original American Football League team, and its 40th in the NFL...
lost to the
New York JetsThe 2009 New York Jets season was the 50th season for the club and the 40th season in the National Football League and the last season at Giants Stadium. While they did not improve their 9–7 record from 2008, this time the team headed to the playoffs. The Jets fired head coach Eric Mangini on...
, 19-13, in front of 51,567 under the roof at Rogers Centre on December 3. There was no pre-season game at Rogers Centre in 2009. In 2009, the Bills Toronto Series also announced a ticket price reduction plan, cutting prices by an average of 17 percent and offering more than 11,000 tickets for less than C$99. Rogers Communications offered partial refunds to ticketholders who had purchased seats in 2008 and who were affected by the price reduction.
2010
The preseason game, which took place August 19, featured the Bills hosting the
Indianapolis ColtsThe 2010 Indianapolis Colts season was the 58th season for the team in the National Football League, the 27th in Indianapolis, and the second under head coach Jim Caldwell...
. The Bills defeated the Colts 34–21.
For the first time, the 2010 regular-season Toronto game took place during the
2010 CFL seasonThe 2010 CFL season is the 57th season of modern Canadian professional football. Officially, it is the 53rd season of the league. Edmonton is scheduled to host the 98th Grey Cup on November 28...
and not after it; it was played on November 7, the last week of the CFL's regular season, with a 1:00 p.m. start (the
Toronto ArgonautsThe Toronto Argonauts are a professional Canadian football team competing in the East Division of the Canadian Football League. The Toronto, Ontario based team was founded in 1873 and is one of the oldest existing professional sports teams in North America, after the Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta...
played the
Montreal AlouettesThe Montreal Alouettes are a Canadian Football League team based in Montreal, Quebec.The current franchise named the Alouettes moved to Montreal from Baltimore, Maryland, in 1996 where they had been known as the Baltimore Stallions...
in Montreal on the same day, but with a 4:00 p.m. start). The
BillsThe 2010 Buffalo Bills season was the team's 41st season in the National Football League, and their 51st overall. It was Buffalo's first season with Buddy Nix in the role of general manager and head coach Chan Gailey....
faced the
Chicago BearsThe 2010 Chicago Bears season was the franchise's 91st season overall in the National Football League. Coming off a disappointing 7–9 record in the 2009 season and failing to qualify for the NFL playoffs for a third consecutive season, the Bears sought to develop their roster and improve on...
, marking the first time a team from the NFC appeared in the series. As part of the NFL Television Contract the game was broadcasted by
FoxFox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
for the first time and not
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
. The Bills relinquished a five-point mid-fourth-quarter lead, falling 22–19 to the Bears.
2011
The Bills played host to the
Washington RedskinsThe 2011 Washington Redskins season will be the 79th season for the team in the National Football League and their 74th representing the District of Columbia . Their home games will be played at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland for the 15th consecutive year. Washington will play in the Eastern...
for the 2011 Toronto Series on Sunday, October 30, at 4:05 p.m. The Bills, in their first regular-season win in the series, defeated the Redskins 23–0, the first time Redskins coach
Mike ShanahanMichael Edward "Mike" Shanahan is the 28th and current head coach of the Washington Redskins of the National Football League. Shanahan also holds the title of Vice President of Football Operations with the Redskins, giving him full control over player personnel with the team. Shanahan previously...
had been shut out in his career.
Preseason games
| Date | Visitor | Score | Home | Score | Stadium | Attendance |
| August 14, 2008 |
Pittsburgh SteelersThe Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team currently belongs to the North Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League . Founded in , the Steelers are the oldest franchise in the AFC...
|
21 |
Buffalo BillsThe Buffalo Bills are a professional football team based in Buffalo, New York. They are currently members of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
24 |
Rogers CentreRogers Centre is a multi-purpose stadium, in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower, near the shores of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989, it is home to the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League...
|
48,434 |
| August 19, 2010 |
Indianapolis ColtsThe Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. They are currently members of the South Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League ....
|
21 |
Buffalo BillsThe Buffalo Bills are a professional football team based in Buffalo, New York. They are currently members of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
34 |
Rogers CentreRogers Centre is a multi-purpose stadium, in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower, near the shores of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989, it is home to the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League...
|
39,583 |
Regular season games
| Date | Visitor | Score | Home | Score | Stadium | Attendance |
| December 7, 2008 |
Miami DolphinsThe Miami Dolphins are a Professional football team based in the Miami metropolitan area in Florida. The team is part of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
16 |
Buffalo BillsThe Buffalo Bills are a professional football team based in Buffalo, New York. They are currently members of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
3 |
Rogers CentreRogers Centre is a multi-purpose stadium, in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower, near the shores of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989, it is home to the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League...
|
52,134 |
| December 3, 2009 |
New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional football team headquartered in Florham Park, New Jersey, representing the New York metropolitan area. The team is a member of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
19 |
Buffalo BillsThe Buffalo Bills are a professional football team based in Buffalo, New York. They are currently members of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
13 |
Rogers CentreRogers Centre is a multi-purpose stadium, in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower, near the shores of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989, it is home to the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League...
|
51,567 |
| November 7, 2010 |
Chicago BearsThe Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
22 |
Buffalo BillsThe Buffalo Bills are a professional football team based in Buffalo, New York. They are currently members of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
19 |
Rogers CentreRogers Centre is a multi-purpose stadium, in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower, near the shores of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989, it is home to the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League...
|
50,746 |
| October 30, 2011 |
Washington RedskinsThe Washington Redskins are a professional American football team and members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team plays at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, while its headquarters and training facility are at Redskin Park in Ashburn,...
|
0 |
Buffalo BillsThe Buffalo Bills are a professional football team based in Buffalo, New York. They are currently members of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
|
23 |
Rogers CentreRogers Centre is a multi-purpose stadium, in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated next to the CN Tower, near the shores of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989, it is home to the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League...
|
51,579 |
External links