I'm not an economist and way back in college I read plenty of studies about how stadiums, especially football stadiums in the middle of nowhere, ultimately do not pay back to the local economy as anticipated. Sure, they create some short-term feel good union labor jobs to build the thing, but that's about it. I patiently await even one academic study that shows how any of these taxpayer-funded projects ultimately succeed in being economic booms. The proposed Bills stadium checks a few of the boxes that make it even less likely:
(1) it's not in Buffalo; it's 10 miles away in Orchard Park, which is a very quiet area when the Bills aren't playing; a year-round business community isn't going to spring up alongside the new stadium
(2) it's open-air, which aside from one-off hockey or maybe some soccer matches, limits the months non-Bills events can take place; also, forget the Super Bowl
(3) it's not in a major touring/tourist destination, unlike let's say a Vegas, which hugely limits the amount of times per year the facility will be open, and given the smaller population, already has an arena for larger concerts
I would argue that it's more likely than not the stadium is open 8-10 times a year for the Bills, a handful of times with sparse attendance if they get a soccer team (when the trend is actually MLS teams to soccer-specific stadiums), and a few times a year with sparse attendance (think UMass at Gillette Stadium) if they can get college football. On the high end, three concerts a year (comparable to Arrowhead; think like the one-off Bad Bunny or Taylor Swift sorta show). Maybe once every ten years they also get a Sabres-Leafs NHL game. That's what you're looking at.
I also totally understand the civic pride argument, but there's plenty of people in Western New York who don't care about sports and will always believe public dollars will be best spent away from the NFL. I also think if Buffalo really only has the Bills to fall back on, then Buffalo has much bigger problems. Not to mention their owner, admittedly like most owners, is showing no loyalty to the city or to the fans if the result is "sorry folks, we're moving to the city will give us the massive handout" and that's bad. There are plenty of cities in America that have figured out how to grow without a football team. No reason Buffalo can't be one of them.
So anyway, I'm not an economist, won't pretend to be one, so my admittedly ignorant take is basically, if they badly need the new stadium and the fans don't want to lose the bills, and if the price to build is $1.6 billion, there's definitely ways to get there without public funding, including:
(1) PSLs. If Buffalo fans are so nutty about football and it's all they got, despite trends in other cities, there's no doubt they can get 60,000 PSLs filled at an average price of $1500, significantly lower than the cost of PSLs pretty much everywhere else. There's nearly $100 million. This might also be vastly underestimated. The Raiders raised $550 million on PSLs alone.
(2) Stadium naming rights. Sofi Stadium went for $400 million over 20 years, or $20 million per year; Allegiant stadium is a whopping $25 million per year. Highmark on Highmark Stadium, current Bills home, is about $5 million per year. With a shiny new stadium I believe the Bills could command $10 million per year for 20 years, and let's call it, conservatively, $15 million per year for the next 20. That's about $500 million.
(3) The NFL will loan $200 million.
So we have now accounted for $800 million. The team now needs to clear $800 million. If the Pegulas don't want to tie that money up, they can finance it. I suspect they could get a 30-year loan of no more than 3%, probably even less at that amount. This means that over 30 years, they wind up paying an additional $400 million, while they can do whatever they want with their money in the meantime. At the end of 30 years, they own the stadium outright (versus a lease that Bills owners could find some way out of, e.g. Chicago Bears). It also means if they want stadium improvements, they can do it without going back to Albany in 10-15 years and asking for more money, which they will. Meanwhile, I also assume that the value of the Bills continues to increase. At the moment, the Bills are worth $2.7 billion. I imagine in 30 years, the. Bills will be worth at least $6 billion, if not $10 billion or more due to continued increasing valuations (I'm betting on the NFL continuing to operate as a cash-cow, and continue to grow), and, of course, inflation.
End of the day, we're left with a team that will be worth 2-3x what they are today, with a family wealth that should follow. Stadium and land ownership could increase that even more. Let's peg the Pegulas at $15 billion in 30 years. When you look at numbers like that and you see how social services are struggling all over New York State and into New York City (who would be funding this project), I cannot come up with a single argument that makes sense other than "if we don't do this, the governor won't win her upcoming election and we'll have to figure out another way to grow the city of Buffalo which sorry folks we just can't do).