Donald Trump Couldn't Get Credit To Buy Buffalo Bills, Former Bank Exec Says
After the death of Buffalo Bills founder and longtime owner Ralph Wilson in 2014, the team went up for sale with an uncertain future.
Terry Pegula, who bought the NHL's Buffalo Sabres a few years earlier, wound up winning the bid and helped keep the team in Western New York, but he had to beat out two other notable bids to do so. The first was led by rockstar Jon Bon Jovi in partnership with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, who many feared would move the Bills to Toronto alongside the company's other sports teams. The second, believe it or not, was led by former U.S. President Donald Trump, and he was very serious about it too.
"I'm going to give it a heavy shot," Trump told The Buffalo News at the time. "I would love to do it, and if I can do it I'm keeping it in Buffalo.
Highmark Stadium
Of course, Trump's bid ultimately ended up being unsuccessful, and with the former president currently on trial for fraud in New York, new details about this saga have come to light. According to Nicholas Haigh, a former Deutsche Bank executive who testified at the trial, bank executives declined to give Trump the financial help necessary to fund his bid.
"Deutsche Bank was not willing to increase its credit exposure to Donald Trump at that time," Haigh said, per ABC News.
However, Haigh said that the bank was still willing to endorse Trump's bid to buy the Bills by sending a letter of support. That support was conditional, though, with the condition being that the Trump Organization was still in compliance with the agreements of three prior loans. After receiving that verification, the bank issued a statement that Trump had the "financial wherewithal" to support his bid.
Trump had infamously been involved in football ownership before. In 1983, he purchased the USFL's New Jersey Generals and owned the team until the league folded in 1985. A big part of the league's demise was actually Trump's insistence on trying to compete with the NFL in the fall, and even filing an antitrust suit against the NFL in trying to force a merger.
Obviously, that lawsuit ended up being unsuccessful, as was his bid to buy the Bills.
