The Bills likely didn't expect to find themselves defending the quality of their brand new $2.2 billion Highmark Stadium. But instead of immediately emerging as one of the league's top venues, the stadium has been panned for its prevalence of obstructed-view seating. On Saturday, we got yet another glimpse at how bad the obstructions truly are for fans. The Bills hosted the Panthers in the stadium's first preseason game, and Bills content creator Alex Brasky went around the stadium to show various obstructed points over the course of the game. It turned out that plenty of fans are going to have to deal with limited views either from railings or when people use the stairwells from the concourse.
Why are there obstructed seats at the new stadium? The Kansas City-based architecture firm behind the project, Populous, made the decision in collaboration with the Bills to create concourses with 360-degree views of the field. The trade-off, though, was that stairways would feed into the aisles in a way that could partially obstruct some seats. Jonathan Mallie — the managing director of Populous’ Americas practice — said in a radio interview:
"Starting with just the building type, stadiums in general or airports, these are some of the most complex buildings in the world that we have to deal with. When you think about that, all of design are trade-offs. And so one major thing that we wanted to do was alleviate as much congestion on the concourses as possible. Create open views from concourse. Old Highmark didn't have this. "So, old Highmark you're going behind a wall and you're going to get your food, to get your drink. So we wanted to keep those stairwells out of that concourse and put them on that leading edge. And this is not unique to Buffalo. So there are 21 professional stadiums between the NFL and Major League Baseball — 14 of which in the NFL — that have the outboard stairs. It's common practice. It's a way to create those views from the concourse, alleviate the congestion. And so when you go and get your drink, you can actually catch a view of the game."
But for the fans who paid money to end up behind a stairwell, they have every right to be disappointed. A stadium opened in 2026 really shouldn't have a bad seat, and Highmark Stadium has many. This article originally appeared on For The Win: Video showed how bad the different obstructed-view seats are at new Bills stadium