Bills Fan 'Totally Shocked' Over Outrageous Season Ticket Prices at New Stadium

Thanks to the Buffalo Bills adopting personal seat licenses at their new stadium, fans will have to pay an exorbitant price to keep their seats.

Jul 26, 2023; Rochester, NY, USA; The Buffalo Bills welcome the Bills Mafia fan group during / Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

After playing in Highmark Stadium for over 50 years, the Buffalo Bills will at last have a shiny new venue to call their own in 2026.

With that new stadium comes a substantial increase in prices, but no one could have expected just how much those prices would skyrocket.

Joseph Lombardo has eight season tickets to the M&T Bank Suite at Highmark Stadium, which aims to provide a club-level experience to a wider audience than usual. Currently, Lombardo pays $24,000 a year for those tickets and must commit for at least three seasons to keep them.

Jul 26, 2023; Rochester, NY, USA; The Buffalo Bills welcome the Bills Mafia fan group during / Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

At the new stadium, though? Lombardo will have to pay $400,000 to keep his tickets. This massive price hike is due to the Bills adopting personal seat licenses (PSLs) at the new stadium, which come out to $50,000 per seat license for Lombardo's eight tickets.

"I was totally shocked," Lombardo told WGRZ. "Their fees are compared to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, we don't have the economy to afford tickets like that.

"It was just something that was nowhere near what I could afford. They didn't offer any alternative, that was the fee that was the price, and so I had to pass up my season tickets starting in the new stadium."

Additionally, the seats the Bills offered Lombardo aren't even inside a suite, so he and his guests would be out literally left out in the cold.

Lombardo is far from the only Bills fan to see ticket prices rise due to PSLs. Last week, season ticket holders started a Facebook group to discuss the PSL offers the Bills gave them, and that group already has over 1,000 members.

A spokesperson for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz also issued a statement to WGRZ regarding the issue.

"The County Executive expressed his disappointment to the Bills and Legends representatives last week during a tour of the new Stadium Experience, regarding their failure to publicly release the PSL prices. For the record, the county has not been provided any prices/costs regarding the PSLs because we are not a party to the PSL agreement, as the county is out of the football business once the new stadium opens up. We are discussing the matter with the state at this time."

To be clear, not all PSLs will be as expensive as Lombardo's, as other teams that use such a system have variable prices depending on where in the stadium the seats are. Still, the drastic increase in ticket costs will unfortunately price many Bills fans out of the new venue.

"We've supported this team since the 60s, and we're grateful to have a new stadium," Lombardo said. "But we wish that we could have a new stadium that we could afford to go to, and continue our traditions."