Report: Bon Jovi’s initial bid for Buffalo Bills rejected

It’s looking more and more like Jon Bon Jovi won’t be getting his mitts on the Buffalo Bills, which means local fans are a lot less likely to lose their team across the Canadian border.

Plus, radio stations and bars around town may soon be able to start playing “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “Bad Medicine” again.

Is this a great time to live in Buffalo or what?

The initial bid to buy the Buffalo Bills submitted by the rock star and his two Toronto-based partners has been rejected by the investment bank conducting the sale of the team for the trust of Ralph Wilson, John Kryk of the Toronto Sun is reporting.

Kryk says Bon Jovi’s group has a chance to submit a higher initial bid that would also make it clear that the rocker and his partners would keep the team in Buffalo for the long term.

The second part must be especially good news to fans in Buffalo in that it seems to reveal that any plans to relocate the team could be a deal breaker.

It has long been believed that Bon Jovi and Co. had intended to move the team to Toronto the first chance they got. Fans in Buffalo organized boycotts of the rock star’s music in protest.

As Kryk points out, the Bon Jovi investment group might have trouble keeping up with the other bidders financially anyway. The two bidders that have already been approved to move on to the next phase -- Terry Pegula and Donald Trump -- are multi-billionaires.

Pegula is believed to be able to buy the team with cash (his offer is said to be in the neighborhood of $1.3 billion), and Trump has said he wouldn’t need financing either.

Bon Jovi would be the principal owner of his group, so by rule he would have to own at least 30% of the team. Kryk says under that arrangement, there’s no way his group could come close to the other offers.

So things are looking grim for Bon Jovi and his aspirations to become an NFL owner.

Ecstatic Bills fans can insert their own “Living on a Prayer” jokes here.

Twitter: @chewkiii