Bill Fitzgibbons grew up a Bills fan south of Buffalo in the 1970s, but left the area 37 years ago to sell agricultural machinery up and down the East Coast. Despite living in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and now outside Atlanta, he has remained loyal to the Bills and what they mean to western New York.
So when Erie County began selling one-of-a-kind bonds to pay for the team’s new stadium, Fitzgibbons jumped at the chance to buy some. The purchase didn’t entitle Fitzgibbons, 61, to own a piece of the team or the stadium; it only helped the county pay for its share of the construction. But it was still a connection to the team and region of his youth, and he would earn 5.25 percent, free of federal tax, on the $11,000 worth of 25-year bonds that he bought.
“It’s impossible to get it out of your soul when you move away,” Fitzgibbons said of the Bills and western New York. “It will always be where I’m from. Without the Bills, all that would be left is chicken wings — which are exported everywhere now — bad weather and Niagara Falls.”
Municipal bonds are about as flashy as sensible shoes. But they are a necessary tool for local governments, and they are popular with investors because of their steady returns and tax benefits. Erie County issues about $40 million a year in AA-rated bonds to help pay for sewers, roads and other infrastructure. In October, it issued $125 million to cover half the money it contributed to the $1.7 billion stadium, which the Bills are building in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo.
Kevin Hardwick, the Erie County comptroller, thought Bills fans, among the most devoted in the N.F.L., would like a chance to buy some of these bonds. They wouldn’t be able to call themselves “owners” like fans of the Green Bay Packers, a publicly owned team that issues essentially worthless stock to its shareholders. But he thought fans could express their loyalty and make a prudent investment by buying a bond or two.
“I’m probably never going to market sewer bonds to the average fan who might want to jump off a bus onto a flaming table to break it and then get squirted with mustard and ketchup as everybody cheers,” Hardwick said, referring to a popular pregame activity with some Bills tailgaters. “But they’re general obligation bonds with an attitude.”
Many economists — and fans — oppose the use of public money to help finance stadiums as inefficient and unnecessary. Some of them see the effort by Erie County as little more than dressing up a bond sale that ought not to have happened.
The sale “seems like a great P.R. play because other than having a chance to have an active hand in the development of the Bills stadium, there’s not much to be gained from this other than any other municipal bond investment,” said J.C. Bradbury, a sports economist at Kennesaw State University in Georgia who is critical of the use of public money for stadiums.
“At least the people who buy the bonds have the reasonable expectation of earning a positive return on that part of their investment,” he added.
During the one-day presale, the county received 95 orders by individual investors for $3.2 million of the bonds, with about 40 percent of them coming from Erie County. The rest were sold to institutional investors, which buy the vast amount of municipal bonds across the country. Some bonds end up in mutual funds that individual investors can buy, though it can be hard to determine whether a fund holds specific bonds like the ones that Erie County issued for the stadium.
The county has rarely sold bonds to individual investors, and Hardwick’s office couldn’t find another instance when stadium bonds were sold directly to individuals, perhaps because of the extra work involved. A website had to be built so investors could learn about the bonds and make purchases. Some underwriters were familiar with sports-related projects, but most had marketed bonds only to fund managers.
Education was a hurdle. Some Erie County residents thought that the bonds were a tax, not an investment opportunity. Others did not understand why the interest rates on the bonds were not calculated until after the sale closed. The bonds had maturity dates of up to 25 years.
“I think a lot of people who’ve never been involved in a bond sale or the municipal bond market just didn’t understand what we were doing,” said Mark Poloncarz, the county executive. “We were not telling our constituents, our taxpayers, that they had to buy these bonds. Instead of some big institutional bank or investor — who knows where they are — making money on Erie County, our own residents will make a few dollars and interest off of Erie County.”
The county marketed the bonds at the same time the Bills were trying to persuade fans to buy personal seat licenses, which are required to buy season tickets at the new stadium (scheduled to open in 2026). Licenses cost as much as $50,000, and many fans have balked at the extra financial burden. Others were angry that the state and county had agreed to spend $850 million to help the team’s billionaire owner, Terry Pegula, build a stadium.
Hardwick and Poloncarz did not have a target for how many bonds they expected individuals to buy, though they said the $3.2 million in sales was somewhat disappointing. Still, they were able to generate interest in a process that few citizens ever think about.
For many Bills fans, like Fitzgibbons in Georgia, the return on his investment was beside the point.
“I hope they never mature,” he said. “I just want to hold them forever.”
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