Bills President & CEO Russ Brandon this morning announced the team has reached a deal with Rogers Communications to officially "terminate" the team's Toronto Series, which saw a home game played in Rogers Centre from '08-13. The team suspended the series in March, though Brandon said it took "some time to come to a final conclusion." Brandon appeared on WGR-AM in Buffalo today and said following last year's game against the Falcons, which drew fewer than 40,000 fans, the team felt it "was time to move away from the series ultimately." Brandon said, "I know there’s a lot of noise about moving games up north and I understand that completely. But when we look at what it has done regionally and what it’s done for us back in Ralph Wilson Stadium --- obviously southern Ontario has become a very large market for us as far as fans coming to our games here at Ralph Wilson Stadium. That has been the positive." He added, "We’re going to have a whole marketing and business strategy in southern Ontario up through the (Greater Toronto Area) to build off of what we’ve done over the last five years. That’s a very important market to us. We’ll probably do some more promotional and business activity up there than we’ve done in the past. But we’ve laid some good ground work and that fan base has been very important to us. When you look at Rochester and southern Ontario, 30-35% of our fans each and every Sunday are from those regions. ... It’s a big number and very important to us” (“Howard Simon Show,” WGR-AM, 12/3). In Buffalo, Vic Carucci notes while the series "generated significant revenue for the Bills, it was viewed as a disaster on both sides of the border." Bills fans "resented losing a game at Ralph Wilson Stadium and viewed the series as an enhancement of the threat of the team's possible move to Toronto." The Bills' 1-5 record in the Toronto games "no doubt had something to do with the team's poor quality overall," but Rogers Centre "did nothing to help." Attendance "proved to be weak, and fans never made it feel like a Bills 'home' game" (BUFFALONEWS.com, 12/3).
