New Stadium Update

By Pat Freeman, The Mighty O’Ba

TE #86 Dalton Kincaid

The Buffalo Bills played their only and last preseason game at the current stadium, against The New York Giants on Saturday August 9th, 2025. Many will be celebrating the great Bills moments that took place at this facility for the last fifty years since it opened in 1973. This stadium should have been built in Down town Buffalo, but as the new stadium leadership failed to broker a decision in the best interest of the region. We continue to allow outsiders to come into this area and promote deals that will never become what they promise.

The location of the new Highmark stadium only benefits the ownership group, but will never benefit this area the way a downtown domed multi-use facility would have. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not telling the truth. The building of the new facility in Orchard Park also assisted the developers to ignore minority hiring guidelines. If they had, the news would be all over the air waves. That would have been a feather in the cap of this project, but like all the rest of the promises of change in this region, it just never happens. Western New York just does not put the right combination of elected officials in place to make tough decisions.

The excitement about continuing to play games in the snow belt in a one trick pony stadium shows that mistakes here become politi cal realities because of the failure for proper preparation leading up to when it became criti cal. Also, the pandemic played a huge role in the failure of this area to do the right things to make a downtown stadium a reality. A state official asked me why I have not taken part in anything else related to the new stadium? My answer was just this simple for what?