Four groups after NFL team for Toronto

[pdasj666]

TORONTO — Four separate groups interested in buying a struggling NFL team and moving it Toronto have approached Mayor Rob Ford since his election in October, city councillor Doug Ford said Friday.Paul Godfrey, chairman of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and head of the PostMedia newspaper chain, has long been the torchbearer for efforts to bring the NFL north, while more recently Rogers Communications Inc., wholesale NFL jerseyshas moved to the forefront with its Bills in Toronto series.That two other parties are also in pursuit of a team is news. Ford didn’t identify the parties, but said City Hall is ready to help them make it happen.”We’ve been approached by four different groups when Rob got elected and they’re saying, ‘Hey, we want to try and bring an NFL team,”‘ Ford, the mayor’s older brother, said in an interview.”It would not be Buffalo, what I’m hearing it would probably be Jacksonville. … How could the NFL ignore the fourth-largest market in North America? As far as I’m concerned they can’t.”Ford believes that bringing a team to Toronto and perhaps even building a new stadium can be accomplished without any taxpayer money.
One longstanding issue is where an NFL team would play, as the Rogers Centre’s capacity of about 50,000 is too small.Ford said there’s talk that 15,000-20,000 seats could be added at the dome if the attached hotel was removed, or another facility could be built at Downsview Park in north Toronto.”I’ll tell you how they’re going to do it,” said Ford. “You don’t re-invent the wheel, you do what Dallas did. Right away you sell the rights to the seats, if you sell 40,NFL Jerseys,000 seats at $20,000 apiece, you’d raise $800 million, not mentioning right off the hop you sell the boxes, you sell advertising, you sell naming rights, cheap NFL jerseysso right off the hop they’re convinced $1 billion literally within a month it would raise. So we’d build the stadium based on that.” The Cowboys also received US$325 million from the city of Arlington to help pay for their $1.2 billion stadium.Ford said the city can help the process along with location, planning and a variety of different public agencies. He believes the potential for job creation and economic stimulation is too powerful to ignore.Ford also says an NFL team need not be viewed as a threat to the Canadian Football League and the Toronto Argonauts.He feels having the teams under the same ownership and creating a ticket-buying package would allow both teams to thrive.