The Buffalo Bills are planting even more flags in Toronto
Could the Rogers family be angling for an NFL team?
You can almost hear the “Go Bills” chants. On September 10 at BMO Field, MLSE announced a new 2025/26 partnership with Buffalo’s NFL team called the Future of Football. The program includes a joint Argos-Bills training camp for 200 lucky GTA youth, cross-team merch, watch parties, giveaways and more festivities. But what was most striking about the announcement was the potent visual of MLSE and Bills brass standing on the same stage, for these two have a deep history.
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Way back in 2008, MLSE successfully wooed the Bills to play home games at Rogers Centre, paying the US team $78 million a season—more than double what the Bills could have expected from playing their home games at home. Toronto football heads also paid an arm and a leg, with the average ticket going for $180.
Rogers Centre, as it turned out, does not make for a good football stadium: too cavernous and oddly shaped to bring the fans close to the action and too small for the NFL’s minimum stadium capacity of 50,000. As the Bills blew season after season, players complained that the relatively indifferent crowds were killing their game. It didn’t help that an outsized number of opposing fans seemed happy to invade Toronto too.
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Bringing an NFL team to the city has been a not-so-secret goal of Larry Tanenbaum and Edward Rogers. In 2014, when the Bills were up for sale, MLSE, Rogers and—for some reason—Bon Jovi put in a bid. They didn’t win, and the Bills were sold to Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula for $1.4 billion. Pegula promptly nixed the tradition of playing in Toronto, and MLSE had to content itself with the little-brother Argos.
But that was then. Now, more than a decade later, Rogers Centre isn’t the only mega-stadium in town anymore. BMO Field has a perfectly serviceable football field and is set to expand to 45,736 seats in preparation for the FIFA World Cup next summer. Perhaps this rapprochement between MLSE and the Bills is a stepping stone to something more permanent.
