Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Buffalo Bills are entering their third week of showcasing what's to come with the new Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park with their Stadium Experience center in Williamsville.
Not only does the Experience center give Season Ticket holders a chance to get an exclusive sneak peak of the future home of the Bills come 2026, but it also allows them the chance to reserve their spot in the new stadium once it opens.
However, there's already some concern amongst Bills fans and Season Ticket holders over the pricing for Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs) for the new stadium, and that's not taking into account the cost of Season Tickets every football campaign.
At this time, the Bills continue to invite club and suite Season Ticket holders to the Stadium Experience center, with the remaining group of Season Ticket holders being invited over the course of the next several months.
One Bills Season Ticket holder that has already been through the Experience center is Melissa Taylor, whose family has been Season Ticket holders since 1977. Her seats are currently in the Pepsi Club at the current Highmark Stadium, Section 211.
"It really made me super excited to see the stadium, and to be a part of it," said Taylor of her experience at the Stadium Experience in an interview with WBEN. "I love the replica of the new stadium, and the surroundings outside it. The gentleman who took us around, he did a really great job in explaining everything. He's like, 'Can you see yourself here?' And I'm like, 'Absolutely!' It was really exciting, it was beautiful. It is going to be a sight, certainly. People are really going to enjoy it. It's just amazing."
After the tour of the Experience center, Taylor was then presented details for her transition to similar seats in the new stadium. While she was familiar of PSLs and their presence in the new stadium, she best describes the numbers they showed with financing options as "very daunting", and something she, along with a number of others, were not prepared for.
"The seats were very expensive, not even including what your Season Tickets cost. If you were going to finance it, it adds an additional almost $12,000 on to the PSL. It was $20,000 per-seat, so it came up to $52,000 if you were going to finance it. Then the season tickets ended up being a 25% increase over what I'm paying now, so it would have been about $63,000 for the PSL, and then my first year of season tickets. And they couldn't guarantee the tickets would not be going up."
"I sat there, and I thought about how our season tickets are four generations, starting off with my grandfather, my dad, myself and my nieces and nephews, and I was like, 'We can't do this.' It was upsetting, and there were no other options given to us."
Taylor adds if she and her family are interested in moving the seats into another section of the new stadium, they would not get a chance to look at those options until after the other Season Ticket holders in that section have gone through their search for tickets.
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Where Taylor feels a bit lucky is she does have two additional Season Tickets in the 100 levels that her nieces and nephews currently sit in. She says her family is currently expecting a June timeframe to get their tour of the Stadium Experience for those seats, where she could get four seats there.
However, when she asked about pricing about those seats, the reps at the Experience center would not give her any information in regards to that.
While it is still early in the process, the prices Taylor was presented with for her club seats has her worried that not only will PSL prices price her out of all her seats, but they will also price other Bills fans out as well.
"The gentleman that I spoke to was actually asking me, 'What do you think you could pay?', which I thought was kind of odd. I don't know what to expect, but I do feel they are pricing people out from the Buffalo area. It's just disappointing," Taylor said. "For so long, you heard about your seniority. So seniority goes back to 1977, and that was very prestigious, and you're really proud of it, and four generations. It doesn't matter at all."
Like many Bills fans in Western New York, the team has become an integral part of families, especially when it comes to Sundays during the football season. Taylor says if her family has to come to the decision to not move forward with Season Tickets in the new stadium, it would be disappointing.
"Four generations, I get to spend time with my nieces and nephews. That's precious moments that we have and many memories. But life is expensive right now, and there's so many things to factor," she said. "I couldn't justify $40,000 in a club for heat and being covered, because that's all you really got. It will be very disappointing if there's no other options given to us."
It wasn't long after her tour of the Stadium Experience center that Taylor take to Facebook to share her experience with the recently created page, Buffalo Bills New Stadium: Season Ticket Holder Discussion Board. The page was created in light of fellow Season Ticket holders simply looking for more information on what to expect when they take their tour of the Experience center down the road.
The creator of the page is Bills Season Ticket holder Tyler Orlando, who shares Season Tickets in Section 138 with his dad, Todd. He says it's a page open to any and all Bills fans.
"If you're a current Season Ticket holder, a past Season Ticket holder or a prospective new one, we just want people to have one space where they can feel heard, they can share what they hear, and they can bounce opinions and ideas off of each other on how we can make the situation as best we can for all of us fans that love this team and love this community," said Orlando in an interview with WBEN.
Orlando has been going to Bills games with his dad since 2003 after his dad originally bought Season Tickets dating back to 1988. He admits he is really excited about the new stadium, and was looking forward to getting his shot at viewing the Experience center in the coming months.
While it will be some time before he gets to take in the Stadium Experience with his dad, Orlando says he was eager to get some more information on PSL pricing and other details from others. Once the rumblings and the details started flowing in from fellow Season Ticket holders, that's when he jumped at the chance to create the communal page.
"This group has been really helpful for me to get some of the facts together," Orlando said. "I originally was really excited, and some of the things I'm hearing, I'm a bit concerned about. What the cost structure is going to look like for Season Ticket Holders. ... It's really shifted to a sense of concern about how are we going to be able to afford, as a fan base, to be able to continue to support the team that we love, outside of the fact that we're already paying for it as taxpayers in Erie County."
In addition to reading Taylor's experience at the Stadium Experience center, Orlando has seen much of the same details and talking points from a number of other fans, to this point. With the price points for PSLs being tough for a lot of Bills fans, Orlando fears the same as Taylor and others with people not moving forward as Season Ticket holders heading into the new stadium.
"I've talked to some fans and colleagues of mine that are on fixed incomes that are going to the games for 60 years, or 50 years it's been in the family, and are going to have to make some tough decisions about whether or not they can continue to do that. And others that are fortunate enough to have a strong, spendable income saying, 'I'd rather take the money and invest it in my basement, and actually cater to watch the games at home,'" Orlando said.
For Orlando, he's, at this point, playing the guessing game of not only when he's going to get into the Experience to find out what the PSLs will cost for his seats, but also what the budget will be for him and his dad.
"What can we, my father and I, as the Season Ticket holders who are splitting the tickets, afford to feel comfortable with paying? From what I hear, that decision has to be made pretty quickly, or they're going to be moving on to the next potential buyer for that seat," Orlando said.
Like Taylor, Orlando says being priced out of the new Highmark Stadium would be devastating. He says the memories made at Bills games over the years will last a lifetime, and he doesn't want to let any of that go.
"My dad and I share the passion for the Bills. For my entire childhood and my adulthood now, that was the one thing that every Sunday, at that home game, we made time to spend together bonding, talking football in the parking lot, talking life, and enjoying all the memories that I grew up," Orland recalled. "I remember watching those games and those memorable moments in that stadium. It would be like losing a part of who we are and what we share, and really who we are at our core.
"I couldn't imagine not being in the parking lot at 8 in the morning with a coffee in my hand, and maybe a few adult beverages soon after that, and sharing those stories and those life moments with my dad, and with the friends and family that often come and join us for those games. It'd be really tough."
What throws Orlando for a loop in the early part of this process is the fact that fans, before the stadium project was even signed off on, were surveyed for what they would be willing and comfortable to spend for PSLs and the experience at a new stadium.
"My dad and I, when we were going through that survey, really thought critically about, what's reasonable?," he said. "We understand there's a new stadium coming in. Somebody needs to foot the bill, and as a Season Ticket holder, I understand that PSLs are part of that. What do we feel comfortable with contributing to that? And the numbers we were looking at and we put out, and had recommended are very, very smaller and different than what we're hearing thus far coming out."
Orlando is hopeful that what he's seen and heard from fellow Season Ticket holders anecdotal, and maybe just the highest price point tickets.
"We have wonderful tickets, but they're not the premium ones in the building, but if that trend continues, we're going to have to make a tough decision, and it's going to be really upsetting for us," Orlando said.
In the meantime, Orlando welcomes anyone to continue the discussions surrounding the new stadium at the Facebook page.
"We'd welcome any and all thoughts, and we're hopeful that we can figure this out together as a fan base, as we've supported this team together as a fan base," he said.