The odds of hearing “Livin’ on a Prayer” blaring through the streets of Buffalo are about as strong as a Bills Super Bowl title this season.
Artist Jon Bon Jovi, rumored to be interested in buying the Bills and moving them north of the border, has become hated in the upstate New York town. Up for sale since owner Ralph Wilson passed away at the age of 95 in March, the Bills are beloved in Buffalo. Bon Jovi is famously a proud product of the Garden State; he’s a Giants fan who stood on the sidelines in 1991 when Scott Norwood’s kick went wide right and Big Blue knocked off the Bills in the Super Bowl.
He could become even more hated if the artist’s ownership group moved the team to Toronto.
“Man, f–k Bon Jovi,” legendary Bills receiver Andre Reed, who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this weekend, told New York Magazine. “You might as well just take this city, throw it in the river, and let it go down Niagara Falls.”
Unable to meet the likely $1 billion price tag on his own, he has teamed up with a group in Toronto that also owns the Maple Leafs, Raptors and the Air Canada Centre, where he has played 19 concerts since 2000, according to the magazine. Hence, the Bon Jovi ban in Buffalo.
Fans from Orchard Park, known as Bills Fan Thunder, began handing out BON JOVI–FREE ZONE posters to local businesses. Jack FM 92.9 announced it would replace the 13 Bon Jovi songs in its rotation with a revised version of “Livin’ on a Prayer” (“Johnny used to get played on Jack / Now he wants our Bills / But Buffalo just won’t take that / He’s wack”). His album “Slippery When Wet” has been banned by a score of local businesses, including Lullabies and Butterflies Family Daycare.
“He won’t be wanted dead or alive,” a fan wrote on the group’s Facebook page. “He will be dead.”
Matt Sabuda and Brian Sinello, co-founders of the Buffalo Fan Alliance, have set a plan to raise money they could offer as a loan to a buyer who would keep the team in Buffalo.
The boycott is two months old and showing no sign of decline. One of the Bills Fan Thunder’s founders, Charles Pellien, says in the article: “We had a band last weekend that was playing Bon Jovi at a bar, and people were booing and throwing our posters at them. The bar’s jukebox had 28 Bon Jovi songs, but no one played them the night New York Magazine was there.”
Multiple reports — from former NFL quarterback and Bon Jovi friend Ron Jaworski and a Toronto Sun reporter quoting anonymous sources — have stated Bon Jovi doesn’t plan to move the team, but Buffalo fans aren’t buying it.
“I can say I’m not gay, but if I’m going to gay bars…,” Pellien said of Bon Jovi’s association with the Toronto group. The Bills can’t move for at least a few years. The recent stadium lease has a clause that prevents them from leaving until after the 2018 season. Bon Jovi probably won’t be setting foot in the stadium in the meantime.
“Let me tell you something, dude,” said Mike Caputo, the Bills Fan Thunder’s PR guru. “F–king snowballs at the Ralph? They hurt. And every one of these people here, they throw snowballs.”