Time for a change: After 53 years, Bills fans finally get their own football palace with new Highmark Stadium

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The Patriots went 32-21 at the old building, formerly known as Rich Stadium and Ralph Wilson Stadium. Their first game at the new stadium is Sunday at 1 p.m.

“I’m well past mourning for the old former Highmark and onto the excitement of this place,” said Steve Tasker, who played for the Bills from 1986-97 and is now part of their media team. “It’s a big moment. We’ve seen all these new stadiums being built ― Gillette Stadium, MetLife, SoFi, Jerry World. To have one here in Buffalo, it’s quite a moment. This stadium makes you feel like you’re on the map.”

The new Highmark was built with $850 million in public funds, and is a glorious shrine to Bills football. Sight lines are magnificent, as the seating bowl was built more vertically than horizontally. The concourse goes 360 degrees around the stadium and is open-air throughout, allowing fans to still watch the game while they buy concessions. The stadium is outdoors to maintain the Bills’ frigid home-field advantage but was built with a roof covering approximately 65 percent of seats. Though the Bills reduced capacity by about 10,000 seats to 60,000, the smallest in the NFL, the stadium is loud, with the crowd roar bouncing off the roof and concrete walls.

“It still doesn’t feel real yet,” Bills tight end Dawson Knox said. “It’s the coolest place I’ve ever played football in. There’s going to be some incredible memories to be made here in the near future.”

The stadium is also filled with homages to the team’s history and fans, such as banners commemorating the team’s AFL championships in 1964 and ’65, or their “Perfect Game” against the Patriots in January 2022, or a replica broken folding table in the concourse. The Bills also insisted on installing natural grass for the first time in their history.

Most importantly, it’s directly across the street from the old stadium, allowing the fans to maintain many of their game-day traditions ― they park in the same neighbors’ yards, tailgate in their favorite spots, and drink at their favorite bars in Orchard Park.

“The thing they did the best, the most important thing is the football game,” former Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick said. “Being across the street from the old site, they kept a lot of the wonderful things that are important for the Buffalo community, and so I think in the end it’s going to be a huge positive for them.”

The new Highmark also represents something bigger for western New Yorkers ― stability. As one NFL official noted on Opening Night, the stadium is the result of a 20-year effort to get the Bills a new home. It wasn’t long ago that the Bills struggled to sell out, and moved one home game per year to Toronto from 2008-13. When former owner Ralph Wilson died in 2014, there was worry of a new owner moving the team out of the NFL’s second-smallest market.

Instead, Sabres owner Terry Pegula bought the Bills, maintaining local ties. Then in 2018 they drafted Josh Allen, who has become the patron saint of Bills football. And in 2024 they finally got funding for their new stadium, cementing the Bills’ presence in western New York.

“It’s been decades that that’s been hanging over this region, and now that’s gone,” Tasker said. “It’s the final stamp of permanency that has been missing since Ralph reached the age of 80.”

Of course, the new digs come with mixed emotions. The old stadium had charm — it was a concrete eyesore, but it was their concrete eyesore, the perfect embodiment of western New York’s blue-collar spirit. Since 1973, multiple generations of fans watched their heroes play at the old building, from O.J. Simpson to Joe Ferguson to Jim Kelly to Doug Flutie to Allen. The Bills went 247-163 at the old Highmark, plus a 16-3 mark in the playoffs.

The Bills have not announced what they are going to do with the giant hole in the ground where the old stadium used to sit. There are rumors of commercial development, potentially in the same vein as Patriot Place, but it’s all theoretical for now.

“I was happy with the old stadium. I didn’t need a new one,” said Chele Illig, a 40-year season ticket-holder from Cattaraugus. “But I’m nostalgic. It’s usually the younger people who think you’ve got to have the newest and the latest.”

Illig also said her tickets increased by about one-third with the move to the new stadium, highlighting an even bigger concern — the Bills pricing out many of their fans. Buffalo is decidedly more working class than most NFL cities. Yet not only did the Bills raise ticket prices, some by as much as double the amount, but also sold personal seat licenses ranging from $750 to $50,000.

The Bills are hardly the only team to price out many of its ardent fans, though, and the demand for tickets was clearly there. The Bills hoped to raise $225 million through PSLs, yet reportedly generated $264 million to help offset the cost of construction. The Bills also used an all-local construction crew, bolstering the notion that the stadium is by western New York, for western New York.

“A huge part of it was the people that were constructing and putting the stadium together were people from Buffalo. They kept that in mind the whole time they did it,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think once the fans get over the sticker shock of the PSLs and things, it’s going to be a wonderful place to watch a football game.”

As much as the fans loved the old Highmark, many also believe it was cursed. The Bills still have not won a Super Bowl, losing four straight in the 1990s, and have suffered heartbreak after heartbreak in recent years with Allen.

Now it’s time to make new memories in their new Highmark Stadium.

“All the superstition, everybody’s going crazy with that stuff. ‘This is the first year we’re going to win the Super Bowl, the curse of the old place is going to be lifted,’ the whole thing,” Tasker said. “It’s like cheering almost for a different team, because that stadium was so much a part of the team’s identity. Now we have to get used to this place feeling like home.”

From the source Ben Volin can be reached at [email protected].