Orchard Park, N.Y. (WBEN) - One season of Buffalo Bills football with stadium construction ongoing across the street along Abbott Road is complete. Two more seasons remain, with Year 2 set to officially commence this Sunday in Orchard Park.
After a few trial runs ahead of Sunday's regular season opener with a training camp practice and two preseason games, Bills' vice president of operations and guest experience Andy Major feels fully ready for kickoff to the season ahead.
"The first three events really went better than we expected," said Major in an interview with WBEN. "I think we were a little nervous about Kids Day, because typically we have a really big crowd for Kids Day. But the traffic patterns, the parking, both ingress and egress, really went well."
Ahead of the final preseason game against the Carolina Panthers, the Bills and the Erie County Sheriff's Office announced a couple of slight changes to the vehicular and pedestrian traffic patterns that will be in effect for the entirety of the 2024 season. Major felt it worked out just fine and will be a good plan in place going forward.
"We tested out the new egress plan at the last preseason game with the road closure for fans to travel two lanes West towards Southwestern from Bills Fieldhouse Drive. We tested the pedestrian walkway, and it really worked well," Major said. "Obviously it wasn't a sold out, 70,000 fans coming to the home opener, but it was encouraging to see that it's a good plan. Even though we know it'll be busy and there'll be more traffic and more people, it really worked well."
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Last season was the first year of adjustments for the Bills and handling their game day experiences with fans at Highmark Stadium and around the construction site of the new Highmark Stadium. One of the biggest things Major and the Bills learned from last year's experience was how great the fans were with travel plans come game day.
"In the beginning, they probably came almost too early, because they didn't know. They thought they weren't going to have enough parking, or that we weren't going to have enough parking, it might be tough to find spaces. But as the season progressed, we really realized that the fans, they had a plan, they knew where they were going. The parking and the traffic got better each game. This year, we've really tried to take that same philosophy," Major noted.
One of the concerns throughout the 2023 season was some Bills fans taking liberties and trying to gain unauthorized access to the stadium construction site on game days. While there is no construction activity ongoing during a Bills game day, Major says safety still has to be the No. 1 priority for the fans, staff, team, and others.
"The new stadium construction site, there's plenty of signs out there. It's a construction site, it's a safety concern. The few fans that even attempted to go into the site last year were immediately arrested, apprehended. Everything's under video surveillance, we've got security everywhere. So we're going to see it, and we're going to arrest people," Major said. "The good news is last year, there was one incident, and it was the first game of the season that drew a lot of attention. And as the season progressed, we really didn't have hardly any issues at all. So fans were great. They're responsible, they're here to watch football and tailgate, and have a great time. We're still going to do our due diligence, but we also think the fan base cares more about football and watching Josh Allen than trying to climb a construction zone fence. But we'll be ready either way."
While each year of stadium construction will present its own challenges in Orchard Park, the team is already in preparation for the final year of game days around the site along Abbott Road. That's because Year 3 of stadium construction is, perhaps, the most complicated season for the Bills ahead of the new facility opening in 2026.
"We lose Lot 4, which is North of the new stadium construction site. So next year will be even more challenging with parking," Major noted. "We're working with the Erie County Department of Public Works and Bill Geary and his team, working with the New York State Department of Transportation. The Taxi, Bus and Limo Association, we're going to be in touch with them. All of our game day partners - Hamburg Police, Orchard Park Police, etc. - even our premium parking teams, but there's some ideas about next year with shuttle services for fans, potentially, or other lots in the surrounding area that might open up for us. So we're in the middle of planning already now, and we've been in this process, actually, for a couple months now, planning for 2025."
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Before we look too far ahead, what's some of the new game day items to take note of before Bills fans enter Highmark Stadium this season?
The overall goal for the Bills this upcoming season is to expedite the fan entry into the stadium, ensuring that fans are in their seats well ahead of opening kickoff.
"Our coach [Sean McDermott], Josh Allen, our football team, all they talk about is how important it is to them to see that place packed at kickoff. Not during the game, not later, not at halftime, but before the game starts. That's when they're getting jacked up more than any time in the game. That's part of our goal, too," Major said.
"Fans are coming in a lot sooner, they want to be inside the game, they want to see Josh Allen and the football team. And we open our gates two hours before kickoff to kind of get things moving, we call it the 'crunch time'."
According to Major, 96% of the fans were inside the stadium before kickoff last season. Part of that was because every gate was open and every line was open thanks to a close relationship with the team's private security team.
"If you're out there tailgating and you think you're going to walk in at 12:30, 12:45, you might have to wait a little bit. But even if you have to wait a little bit, you're still getting in, because we have some new technology with the magnetometers out there, a more efficient, safer process at Gates 5 and 6, where we have some new technology," Major noted.
And this year's security will, once again, be plentiful in-and-around the stadium thanks to the renewal of the Security Guard Licensing Act.
"It allows us to have our private security team," Major said. "They must be at least 50% security guard licensed, and then the remaining staff don't have to be licensed. So imagine if you're looking at a magnetometer and it goes red or green. You and I can do that. We don't need to be licensed, but the person who's doing the rescreening, they should be licensed. So things like that, where we worked with New York State to really help us get the staffing. Because without it, we would have to close gates and close lines like we did years ago because there weren't enough licensed security guards to man all these different areas for a 70,000 seat stadium."
The stadium is also going to have new ticket pedestals this year to help people with their tickets and make it even quicker and more efficient to get fans through the gates. Major says it's very similar to scanning a plane ticket at your gate at an airport.
"We've already seen fans already knowing how to use it, and being very efficient without too much help from our staff," he noted. "We have plenty of our staff out there to assist guests that need it, but we've found already that the fans already pretty much know what they're doing. It's already been out there in the industry, so if fans have done that even once, this is easy for them."
And once again, the Bills are asking fans to have an advanced plan for not just your parking before the game, but also your arrival to the stadium. This is especially the case for parking in the stadium lots.
"If you don't have a Bills parking permit, you're not going to be able to park in the Bills lots. But the neighborhood lots park more fans than we do anyway. So just have a plan with where you want to park in the neighborhood lots, and certainly we encourage everyone to carpool. The more people that come together, we're saving spaces, we're saving some traffic for the Sheriff, who does a great job out there. It just makes it a little better experience for everybody," Major said.
Major also notes how important the local neighborhood lots are to helping enhance the game day experience for Bills fans in Orchard Park.
"Without them, we wouldn't be able to do what we do on game day, and that's have an amazing fan experience," he said. "The neighbor lot owners are paramount to our success, and we can't thank them enough for parking cars, now parking RVs and buses, because we tried to help offset some parking losses by not having those on the Bills property. They've done a great job with it, and we even appreciate the fact that they contact us about our policies for the parking lots. They're now implementing fan policies in their lots so that their lots are safe, and fans can have fun and tailgate, and be responsible without it getting too out of control. But we've seen the neighborhood lots and the fan behavior there greatly improve as well, just like the Bills lots.
"So thank you to the Bills' neighbor lot owners! We really appreciate them."