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The Bills Toronto Series was a series of National Football League (NFL) games featuring the Buffalo Bills played at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The original series began in the 2008 season and ran through 2012. The Bills were originally scheduled to play eight (later reduced to seven) home games over five seasons as part of the agreement, which included one regular-season game each of the 5 years and one pre-season game on the 1st, 3rd and (originally) 5th year of the series. This included the first regular-season NFL game played in Canada, which the Bills lost to the Miami Dolphins.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = CTV News )〕 The agreement was renewed for five additional years, with an annual regular season game and one preseason game, on January 29, 2013, but following the 2013 contest it was announced that the 2014 game had been postponed for a year. On December 3, 2014, it was announced that a deal had been reached to terminate the remainder of the contract, ending the Bills' experiment in Toronto.〔http://www.tsn.ca/bills-reach-deal-to-terminate-remaining-toronto-games-1.150543〕 The series was conceived by a group that included former Bills owner Ralph Wilson, Ted Rogers of Rogers Communications and Larry Tanenbaum of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. ==Background== Although NFL exhibition games have been played in Canada since 1950 (and even before that, the American Football League of 1926 played a regular-season game in Toronto), it was not until the Bills Toronto Series that a regular-season NFL game was played north of the border, on December 7, 2008.〔 Regular season NFL games have been played outside the United States since 2005, with Fútbol Americano (a one-off regular season game in Mexico City) and the 2007 debut of the NFL International Series, which has promoted regular-season games in London. Both of those events were separate from the Toronto Series, in that the Toronto Series was orchestrated by an individual team while the other regular season games were orchestrated by the league. Toronto is about 60 miles (97 km) by air from Buffalo and 86 miles (138 km) by car via the Queen Elizabeth Way. Much of southern Ontario is within the Bills' marketing territory as defined by the NFL.〔Brady, Erik. "(As Bills head for Toronto, can Canada work as an NFL home? )" ''USA Today'', 4 December 2008.〕 About 10,000 to 15,000 attendees (15-20% of the total) of Bills' home games at Ralph Wilson Stadium come from southern Ontario.〔Warner, Gene. "(Bills-Jets still tough to sell in Toronto )" ''The Buffalo News'', 3 December 2009.〕〔Gaughan, Mark (2011-03-30). (Toronto deal paying off for Bills ). ''The Buffalo News''. Retrieved 2011-03-30.〕 However, a 2012 poll by Sun Media found that the Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots were more popular than the Bills in Toronto. Teams from the two cities often host games in the other. The Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League played a preseason game at Buffalo's Civic Stadium in 1951. A similar arrangement saw the Buffalo Braves play a total of 16 regular season games at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto from 1971 to 1975, while the Toronto Raptors played a preseason game at Marine Midland Arena in Buffalo in 1996 and had a second game scheduled for 1998 that was cancelled due to the 1998–99 NBA lockout. The Raptors have discussed the possibility of playing additional preseason and regular season games in Buffalo, while the Toronto Blue Jays have considered playing an exhibition game in Buffalo, which is home to their Triple-A affiliate the Buffalo Bisons, having previously played the Cleveland Indians in an exhibition game at War Memorial Stadium in 1987. In 1974, the Toronto-Buffalo Royals of World Team Tennis (WTT) simultaneously called both cities home, playing half their home matches at the CNE Coliseum in Toronto and the other half at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. The franchise was originally granted to Toronto to begin play in WTT's inaugural 1974 season, but management decided to play in both cities. The Royals were sold and moved to Hartford, Connecticut following the 1974 season, but folded on February 1, 1975, without ever playing another match. Rogers Centre's capacity (54,000 seats) currently is slightly lower than the number of seats for a stadium to be a viable venue for a permanent Toronto team as all other NFL stadiums have at least 60,000 seats as of 2011.〔 It is typically configured at 49,500 seats for Blue Jays baseball, though more were added for the 2008 Bills games for a total of 54,000. Toronto Series games are the only NFL games not subject to the league's blackout restrictions. For instance, the 2010 Toronto Series preseason game had nearly 15,000 available seats but was still seen on television within the stadium's blackout zone. All of the Bills Toronto Series games have aired either at 4 p.m. or during Thursday Night Football; Rogers owns the Canadian television rights to NFL games aired in those time slots (whereas rival Bell Media owns the rights to all other NFL games). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bills Toronto Series」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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