Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Buffalo Bills are in the very early stages of inviting the team's Season Ticket holders to their Stadium Experience center at the Walker Center in Williamsville. This experience offers fans an interactive look at every aspect of the new Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, while also giving Season Ticket members priority access to visit and select seats in the new stadium.
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However, in the week-plus time that club and suite Season Ticket holders have taken in the Stadium Experience, some concerns over pricing for Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs) is putting some Bills fans and Season Ticket holders in a bit of a predicament.
According to some social media discussions started Wednesday with the new stadium, pricing for PSLs with some of the club Season Ticket holders was noted to be around $20,000 per-seat. That's also not taking into account the price of Season Tickets each season.
One Bills Season Ticket holder at the current Highmark Stadium says he has yet to get his turn to explore the Stadium Experience center, but has a family member that is a current club holder that was able to give them some information about the PSL pricing.
"We know, just by doing the math of what the club seat holder pays now compared to what we pay, we're a little concerned that if that math still lines up with the new stadium, we may be priced out of the new one. That's just our concern, and we won't know for sure until we actually get into the Stadium Experience," said Colin, who has Season Tickets with his wife in Section 124.
Colin says with the Bills doing their fan surveys a couple of years ago and gauging the interest of what fans can reasonably afford with a new stadium, he admits it was shocking to hear the numbers, at least for the club seats.
"I understand the clubs are a completely different animal from what the general seating is, but it's definitely giving us anxiety, at the moment," Colin said. "Again, we won't know for many months, probably, exactly what we're going to be looking at."
When talking with his representative for the new stadium, Colin told WBEN it would be 6-to-12 months before he gets his turn to venture through the Stadium Experience center.
He adds there's another element to this process that is making him and his wife uneasy about the whole experience.
"We would be expected to come up with 20% of the PSL at that time. Unfortunately, at this moment, we don't know what that number looks like," Colin said. "That just kind of ramps up the anxiety about the situation, not knowing how much money we would have to come up with on the spot."
In addition, for any Bills fan who may not want to pay the price for the seat similar to where they sit now and wish to move to another area at the new stadium, they will be pushed to the back of the line for that designated spot when it comes time to talk to other Season Ticket holders.
Colin says it's something he would still consider, depending on what he's told during his experience at the Walker Center.
With the expressed concerns of some Bills fans over the pricing of PSLs with the new stadium, it is something new Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the team, Pete Guelli, plans to take priority with once he starts his new role with the organization this April.
Guelli says the bottom line is a team has to have a value proposition that works for its fans.
"We'll take a hard look at it, looking forward to diving in with everybody on the Bills, I'm looking forward to talking with the people at Legends. I know leadership at Legends extremely well, so I'm confident we'll be able to work closely together on it," said Guelli during his introductory Zoom call on Wednesday. "And as soon as I get in there, the first thing I'm going to do is go to the Experience Center and take a look for myself. So once I have a little bit more information, I'll be able to give you a more definitive answer on that."
A PSL is a license fans can purchase that gives them the right to own a particular seat at the new Highmark Stadium. It then also gives the fan the right, if and when, they would ever want to sell that seat.
John Cimperman from Barnstorm Sports and Entertainment says PSLs have become commonplace in the building of new stadiums across the sports landscape.
"It dates back a good 20 years when the practice began, and quite frankly, it's a way to help fund these new facilities," said Cimperman in an interview with WBEN. "In the case of Buffalo, while $850 million of that is being funded by the taxpayers, there's still another $700,000, $800,000, that still needs to be funded, and that comes in the way of PSLs, that comes in the way of sponsorship, and it also comes in the way of ownership contributions. But all those elements combined is what helps get these facilities built."
While the pricing of the PSLs may come as a surprise for some Bills fans, Cimperman says the dialogue has been happening for a couple of years now where the PSLs, themselves, shouldn't come as a surprise with the new state-of-the-art facility.
"I will say a lot of it is built on supply and demand, and the more 'premium' your seat is, the higher that PSL is going to be. Suites, club seats, lower bowl, I would expect it would be higher than upper bowl, 300 level-type seats," Cimperman explained.
"The investment, it's new to Buffalonians, it's new to Bills fan. I understand the concern, and definitely have empathy for some of the longtime season ticket holders that maybe weren't factoring in that incremental cost."
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Over the last several months since this process began with the new stadium, leadership atop the Bills organization has stressed an importance with trying not to price out the fanbase with the pricing of PSLs with the new stadium. However, Cimperman feels given the current landscape of the industry, there may be some fans that will find themselves not willing to pay the cost of a PSL in the new Highmark Stadium.
"A lot of the markets did launch PSLs at, quite frankly, very high prices. In a Dallas, in a Los Angeles, they have much bigger corporate Season Ticket holder bases. From the premium and the club, there's much more demand in those bigger markets. Buffalo is gonna be different," Cimperman explained. "It's a different market, and from what I understand and I hope this is to be true, the organization did quite a bit of research, did focus groups, so prior to launching these prices, hopefully - I believe this is the case - there was homework done and research done to make sure that it fits the goal of, as we keep hearing, 'Built in Buffalo'. So let's hope that data went into the pricing."
Where some of the frustration may lie with Bills fans and Season Ticket holders is the team is not making the pricing of these PSLs public for seats in the new stadium. However, Cimperman can understand the Bills' strategy of getting Season Ticket holders into the Experience Center first.
"Probably more than anything else, it's an emotional sell. This is not a rational Xs and Os sell. This is investing in teams, investing in tickets, you're investing in emotions. So I do understand why they want fans to go through that experience, and get emotionally invested in the facility, which will be in stark contrast to what fans have experienced for the last 30-plus years in Orchard Park," Cimperman said. "I think going through that experience is hopefully going to rationalize some of that incremental investment."
As for the possibility of some fans needing to wait their turn again if they wish to downgrade from their current seats at Highmark Stadium, Cimperman says that is a pretty normal procedure that teams implement across the board.
"You don't want to displace someone in the 300s and start to play favorites that way. So they have to go through the process," he said. "Will there be attrition? Sure, there will. People are at different stages of their lives, different stages of their economic well-being. There will be attrition, but you do need to go through and make sure that every fan, at least, gets the right to renew where they were."
So what advice may Cimperman have to offer for Bills fans as they continue to play the waiting game with the Stadium Experience and options regarding PSLs? He says it's a matter of taking a moment to further evaluate your potential investment with the new stadium.
"When I was, for most of my career, marketing season tickets and PSLs, you have to look at investment like this. Again, I did say emotional, but it's also, what are you displacing? Is going to 8-10 games a year, is that potentially replacing a vacation? Is that replacing things of that sort? You just need to weigh what your threshold is for that investment, because it is an investment," Cimperman said.