Buffalo Bills

The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team plays its home games at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York.

Founded in 1959 as a charter member of the American Football League (AFL), the team joined the NFL in 1970 after the AFL–NFL merger. The team's name is taken from an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) franchise from Buffalo that was named after western frontiersman Buffalo Bill. Drawing much of its fanbase from western New York and neighboring southern Ontario, the Bills are the only NFL team that plays home games in the state of New York. The franchise is owned by Terry Pegula, who purchased the Bills after the death of the original owner Ralph Wilson in 2014, and a coalition of private equity funds and investors who purchased a minority stake in the team in 2024.

The Bills advanced to the AFL Championship Game three years in a row from 1964 to 1966, winning the first two—the only major professional sports championships for a team representing Buffalo. They struggled heavily in the latter years of the AFL and for much of their first two decades in the NFL, tallying only five winning seasons and three postseason berths from 1967 to 1987. They became perennial postseason contenders in the late 1980s; from 1990 to 1993, they appeared in a record four consecutive Super Bowls and lost each one. From the early 2000s to the mid-2010s, the Bills endured the longest playoff drought in the four major North American professional sports, a 17-year span that made them the last franchise in the four leagues to qualify for the postseason in the 21st century. They returned to consistent postseason contention by the late 2010s, but not the Super Bowl. Their four Super Bowl appearances are the most among NFL franchises that have not won the Super Bowl, a record they share with the Minnesota Vikings.

In 2024, the Bills became one of the first NFL teams to sell part of their franchise to outside private equity investors. 20.6% of the team interest was sold at a valuation of $5.6 billion, including 10% to the American investment group Arctos Partners LP.