Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR Sports Radio 550) – With the turn of the calendar now into September, it brings about the return of football and hockey to Western New York.

While the Buffalo Bills are set to kick off the 2025 season this Sunday night against the Baltimore Ravens at Highmark Stadium, the Buffalo Sabres will return to the ice for the start of training camp in the middle of the month.

Ahead of the upcoming hockey season at KeyBank Center, the Sabres have made a number of improvements to the arena with the goal of enhancing the experience for fans at games this year.

“Every year we’ve been trying to do something over there. We’re in charge of the capital improvements in that building, so last year, putting in the new video board, which was a nice move. And this year, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback in the offseason about the sound in the building, whether how it’s kind of modulated, the quality of it or how it’s directed,” noted Guelli while appearing on the “Jeremy and Joe Show” on Tuesday. “It could be a little bit challenging, so we put a new sound system in this year. We really think combined with the video board, that’s going to really change the in-bowl experience for people. That was No. 1.”

Another point of emphasis for KeyBank Center upgrades this season was the ingress and egress of fans from the time people get into the building, and then how they leave. That has been improved with the help of new Evolv technology systems to get people in the building faster.

“It’s going to be at every entrance. So when you walk in now, you don’t have to empty your pockets. You go right in, get queued up to get ticketed and get into the building. We think that’s going to speed things up from an ingress standpoint,” Guelli said with Jeremy White and Joe DiBiase on WGR. “We’re also looking at how people leave, that’s working more closely with the public authorities to make sure that we’re set up the right way to get people out of the building right now. But the thing we can control is how we get them in. So we’re starting with an Evolv tech so when you walk in, you’ll have a completely different experience this year than you had last year.”

While the improvements made to KeyBank Center this year are geared toward the enhancement of the fan experience on game nights, Guelli says there remains a number of improvements to come for a 30-year-old building that hasn’t been renovated much since opening in 1996.

“We’re looking at the long-term functionality of that facility right now, so literally, everything’s on it,” he said. “We’ve got Populous in as an architect looking at it. What do we need to do in the future? How do we make it better? How do we improve the experience? And probably just as important, how do we track more events down there?”

Guelli knows well that KeyBank Center needs to be a catalyst for growth in Downtown Buffalo not just with Sabres games, but other events taking place in the city.

“I think we’ve got, obviously, the suburbs unlocked with the new stadium and what we’re talking about doing there. But we want to see things pick up in Downtown Buffalo,” Guelli said. “We drove about 1,300,000 in people through that building last year, I’d love to see that number north of 1,500,000, because I know what impact that can have on the city. So we’re looking at every aspect we can with the focus on the team, and then trying to get as many events in there as humanly possible.”

As for the hockey team this upcoming season, Guelli knows the Sabres need to get off to a better start, especially with 10 of the team’s first 14 games this year on home ince.

“We had a pretty good season at home last year, we want to see that carry over. Obviously, [we need to] get a little bit better on the road and put those two pieces together, but we think people are going to be excited,” Guelli said. “We made a lot of changes in the offseason, obviously bringing in [Michael] Kesselring and [Conor] Timmins to shore up the defense, and [Alex] Lyon as a backup goalie. And made a lot of changes off the ice, bringing in Jarmo [Kekalainen] and Brian Galivan on the strength and conditioning side, and Eric Staal. We can’t wait to start playing, and it’s always interesting until you get on the ice and see exactly what that team looks like. But 37 days out, we’re getting close.”

On the football side, the Bills are, once again, getting plenty of national attention this season, especially with the NFL MVP under center and the team having won five-straight AFC East titles.

“We’re getting these nationally televised games, obviously Hallmark came in to shoot a movie this year, we had ‘Hard Knocks’. You’re a little bit of a victim of your own success,” Guelli noted. “I think people still love the traditional Sundays at 1 p.m., but when you’ve gotten to the level that we get, you know you’re going to get out of the national games. I’m probably like everyone else, a little excited about kicking it off. We know we’ve got a tough opponent coming in here, but it’s going to be a great game, and it’s fun to be on a national stage for the opener.”

One exciting element of the Bills’ season before kickoff this Sunday night is the recent release of the new NFL “Rivalries” jersey series, with Buffalo set to debut their new look in Week 5 on “Sunday Night Football” against the New England Patriots.

Today’s Forecast: COLD FRONT. 🥶#BillsMafia | #GoBills pic.twitter.com/3vpDJWi8rM

— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) August 28, 2025

Guelli says the reception to the new look from Bills fans and others around the league has been very positive.

“You’re always wondering, ‘What are people going to think?’ We liked it, obviously, the league liked it and made a lot of changes to kind of get it exactly where we thought it would be, and tried to roll it out the right way to everybody. But the reception has been really good,” Guelli said. “I think people are obviously excited to see that uniform in action, and to get the merchandise when it comes out too. It’s just a cool look. I think it really represents Buffalo in a lot of ways, from the helmet to the logo on the shoulder, the ‘Bills Mafia’ on the inside collar. A lot of the high points that people love to see in new uniforms, I think we hit them.

He adds the hidden elements of the new uniform is what people seem to really enjoy.

“The discoverable piece of a uniform like that and all those little descriptive pieces, I’ve done a number of these projects, you don’t really look at how is it going to sell, necessarily. If you hit the right tone, and again, it really represents the brand and maybe it’s a little bit different, that usually takes care of itself. I think in this case, so far, everyone’s really responded extremely well to it,” Guelli said.

As the Bills get ready to play their final season at the current Highmark Stadium along Abbott Road in Orchard Park, work continues across the street to get the new Highmark Stadium ready for opening next July.

Along the way, many Bills Season Ticket holders have gotten the chance to secure their spot in the new stadium by purchasing their Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs) over the last several months. Guelli says that process continues to go well in the final months before football kicks off in the new state-of-the-art facility.

“I really do wish, I know it’s impossible, to get everybody through there at some point. I think you guys are doing a good job of articulating what you’re seeing when you walk through, but it’s hard to describe to people how different this experience is going to be,” Guelli noted. “It’d be great to get everybody through, but the Bills Experience piece has worked really well. I think people feel like it’s representative, and it’s been brisk.”

Guelli adds the team has gotten all of its Season Ticket holders through the process, and now it’s going back and talking to those that were maybe on the fence about locking in their spot for the new stadium before.

“We’re talking to the people that just hadn’t engaged for whatever reason and went out with kind of a ‘last chance’-type email, because we don’t want you to miss out. And the response to that has been really high,” Guelli said. “I think there’s a lot of people that were probably sitting on the sidelines, Season Ticket holders waiting to see how things played out, and they’ve seen the activity over there, and now they’re excited about getting on board. So the overall process went really well, still moving at a high clip. And we’re going to be going to the waiting list here in the middle of September, and not long after that, we should be done.”

Featured Image Photo Credit: Brayton J. Wilson – WGR Sports Radio 550