Bills vs Lions: Why the Canadian national anthem will be played before Thursday Night Football (Via X)
When the Buffalo Bills host the Detroit Lions on Thursday night, September 17, something no NFL team has done before at their home ground will happen inside the brand-new, $2.1 billion Highmark Stadium. Canadians make up between 10 and 15 percent of the season-ticket base, according to the team. At the time deposits were collected for personal seat licenses at the new Highmark Stadium, 18 percent of those payments came from Canadian addresses. The Sabres have played both anthems before every home game since 1970. The Bills under former owner Ralph Wilson used to host an annual Canadian fan appreciation game tied to Canadian Thanksgiving, and the team played regular-season games in Toronto from 2008 to 2013.
President Trump signed fresh import restrictions on Canadian goods just days before this announcement, in yet another escalation of the ongoing trade dispute between the two countries.
Before a single snap, both “O Canada” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” will ring out. “Regardless of the climate, we’re going into Toronto,” Guelli told the New York Times last year. “Nothing against all the Bills fans in southern Ontario, but this is an insultingly dumb idea,” one wrote.
Toronto’s Barenaked Ladies will perform the Canadian anthem, followed by Auli’i Cravalho singing the American one. It sounds simple. But there is a lot more happening here than just pregame music, and not everyone is happy about it. The short answer is geography and money. Toronto sits roughly two hours north of Orchard Park. Southern Ontario has been one of the Bills’ most loyal markets for years. That is not a casual fanbase. That is a financial pillar. This is also not completely new territory for Buffalo sports. The Bisons, the Bandits, same story. What’s happening now is really the Bills catching up with the rest of Buffalo’s sports culture. Pete Guelli, the Bills’ executive vice president and chief operating officer, made the team’s position clear even before this announcement. “The passion for the Bills in that market has not subsided at all with what’s been happening. The timing, though, is hard to ignore. The Bills were careful to frame the anthem decision as a tribute to fans, not a political statement. But when you do something like this in the middle of a trade war, people are going to read into it. Some American fans were blunt. Others questioned why a foreign anthem belongs at a domestic NFL game at all.