Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Franchises

Buffalo Bisons Use Blue Jays' Affiliation, Border Location To Tap Into Canadian Market

The Blue Jays prior to this season moved their Triple-A affiliation from Las Vegas to Buffalo, and while the move has had “business implications for both teams," there has been a "more profound effect for the Bisons, where both the team and Buffalo’s beleaguered downtown core have new opportunities for marketing and making money,” according to Morgan Campbell of the TORONTO STAR. The Bisons’ arrangement with the Blue Jays means more visitors "are Canadian.” Bisons VP & GM Mike Buczkowski said that within “24 hours of announcing their Jays affiliation, the Bisons received 100 season ticket orders from fans in southern Ontario.” Canadian fans on Opening Day “helped swell attendance to 15,852, the best figure for a weekday game since 1999.” The team is "set to start advertising on roadside billboards in cities between Hamilton and the border" to try and draw more Canadian fans. Also, to “accommodate Jays fans the club now accepts Canadian dollars." Buczkowski said that through the first month of the season, 25% of purchases at the team’s online store “come from Canada, roughly twice the normal rate.” Vendors at Coca-Cola Field “similarly report that a quarter of the cash they handle is Canadian.” Buczkowski said that the deal with the Bisons is “meant to draw western New Yorkers to the Rogers Centre” just as the Bills “hope to use the Bills in Toronto series to establish themselves as a regional team with a fan base beyond Buffalo’s shrinking market” (TORONTO STAR, 5/17).

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2013/05/17/Franchises/Buffalo-Bisons.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2013/05/17/Franchises/Buffalo-Bisons.aspx

CLOSE