Phil Ranallo died in 1986. The Courier-Express, where he was a beloved sports columnist, died four years earlier. Many of his columns for the morning paper quoted a stable of richly imagined characters, including Honest Harry and Sam the Immigrant. One subject that Phil never wrote about, of course, was personal seat licenses (PSLs). Safe to say, though, he would have hated them.
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“What’s new, Harry?”
“I’ll tell you what’s new, Sam. It’s these damn PSLs. They call football fans around here ‘Bills Mafia’ nowadays. Well, Terry Pegula is the one who’s acting like a Mafia don.”
“What do you mean, Harry?”
“He’s telling his best customers, ‘Hey, nice season tickets ya got there. Be a shame if anything happened to them.’ It’s the old protection racket, Sam. ‘You pay me — or else.’ “
“Come on, Harry. It’s not like that. Lots of teams use money raised by PSLs to help defray the costs of building a new stadium.”
“We’re already paying for it, Sam. There’s $850 million of taxpayer dollars going into the new joint.”
“Yeah, but that’s only half the cost. The rest is coming from the Bills and the NFL. What’s wrong with having the people who are going to sit in those seats help to pay for them?”
“It used to be team owners set a price for football tickets, and then you paid it, or you didn’t. Now they want you to pay a price just for the right to pay again for the tickets.”
“Well, how much?”
“That’s the thing, Sam. They won’t say. Never trust a salesman who wants to sell you something but won’t tell you how much it’s going to cost.”
“Then why get so bent out of shape, Harry? Maybe the cost won’t be so bad.”
“Word is getting around that the Bills want $50,000 per for high-end seats. And who buys just one? That’s $100,000 for two.”
“Yeah, Harry. I can do the math.”
“Other prices we’ve heard are $20,000 per and $15,000 per, depending on the seats.”
“I thought you said the Bills haven’t announced PSL prices.”
“They haven’t. We don’t know yet what PSLs will cost for the cheaper seats. The only prices we’ve heard are from fans who have already been to the so-called Stadium Experience Center.
“Experience Center? Sounds like a euphemism straight out of ‘1984.’ “
“Yeah, and the Bills went 2-14 that year.”
“So, you’re telling me season-ticket holders go to the Experience Center to experience sticker shock.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Who’s running this operation?”
“The company calls itself Legends. Seriously. And guess who owns a big share of it.”
“Who?”
“Jerry Jones.”
“What, Darth Vader wasn’t available?”
“Exactly. And we’re supposed to feel good somehow that the PSLs here will cost less than they did in Dallas.”
“Did you see where the county exec called out the Bills for their PSL prices? He says the governor is mad, too.”
“Yeah, but they had leverage during negotiations on all that public money. They should have spoken up for the fans when it could have made a difference. Now it’s just grandstanding.”
“Well, grandstands are what they’re helping to build.”
“Yep, and that’s a lot of public money for private profit.”
“Don’t be so hard on Terry Pegula, Harry. He saved us. The Bills and Sabres both might have left town but for him. We owe him.”
“We do, Sam, that’s true. We owe him our everlasting thanks. We owe him for the tickets we buy. But why should we owe him for a made-up license to buy said tickets?”
“But Harry, no one has to pay for a PSL if they don’t want to. This is just the free market at work. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is the Bills are a public trust, Sam, not just a trust fund for the super-rich. Let the Bills pay for their own stadium. They make enough money to do that.”
“George Carlin used to tell a joke about why a dog licks his, uh, nether regions: ‘Because he can.’ Why do NFL teams blackmail us into paying for their stadiums? Because they can.”
“Yes, because we love the product too much. The Bills know we’ll complain, but then we’ll pay whatever it takes.”
“We can’t help it, Harry. We’re hooked.”
“Maybe so, but the vein of anger runs deep on this one. I think deeper than anyone can see just yet.”
“The NFL has a license to print money. James Bond had a license to kill. And the Bills, well, they have a license to drill.”
“Yeah, they’re drilling into the ground beneath Orchard Park and hoovering up all the dollars they can from their very best customers. You know what I call that?”
“Oh, no, Harry. Don’t say it.”
“Fracking! They’re fracking us, Sam!”
“There’s no need for that kind of talk, Harry. We’re in heaven now. God doesn’t charge us for PSLs up here.”
“Don’t give Him any ideas, Sam.”
Lead image: See stadium renderings at www.buffalobills.com – renderings are subject to change
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