After all of the talk and all of the hype the Buffalo Bills finally played their first pre-season exhibition on August 9th at the Rogers Centre. And, by all accounts it was a miss even thought the Bills defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 24 – 21 in front of what has been described as an enthusiastic crowd. There was a great deal of disappointment in that the game was played by second stringers while the stars rested in spite of the fact that ticket prices ranged from $79 to $575.

This little NFL experiment is said to have incurred a deficit of between $4 and $5 million dollars, which is hardly the result that Rogers was hoping for. Attendance was 48,434, but the reality is that only 33,000 tickets were sold at face value. It wasn’t a happy occasion for scalpers either as it was reported that just prior to game time scalpers were letting $300 tickets go for as little as $20! Rumours are abound that as many as 17,000 tickets were given away in order to make the stadium look full and as many as 5,000 tickets remained unsold.

Are Torontonians savvy buyers who could just not wrap their heads around paying full whack for a meaningless exhibition with a second-stringer line-up? Or did Rogers plain and simply do a poor job of marketing the event? Will Torontonians be out in force for a regular season game? We’ll have to wait until December 7th when the Bills will take on the Miami Dolphins and see how ticket sales go.

For information on the continuing Bills games in Toronto an official website has been set up where you can get all of the latest and greatest information.