About a decade ago, Mike Smith tried to capture the sour mood of the patrons in his neighborhood bar, Joe Kool’s. For years, their favorite sports teams endured winless seasons, playoff droughts and epic collapses, so he designed a T-shirt that included a map of southern Ontario with London in the middle and lines connecting to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Toronto. Above it were the words “The Epicentre of Losing” and a red arrow pointing at London.
Since then, London has morphed into an epicenter of winning, sort of. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, but have made the playoffs for eight straight seasons (losing in the first round almost every time). Though the Cleveland Browns last won an N.F.L. title the year the Beatles invaded America, the crosstown Guardians have made the American League playoffs six times since 2016.
The real turnarounds, though, are the Buffalo Bills and the Detroit Lions, traditionally two of the N.F.L.’s sad sacks. They convincingly won their divisions this season and, as the playoffs start this weekend, are serious Super Bowl contenders, something that delights their fans in southern Ontario, which separates the two cities.
“There’s a mutual respect and sympathy among Bills and Lions fans,” said Charlie Smith, who runs Joe Kool’s with his father. “Rust Belt cities don’t get a break, which is why I’m happy for both teams.”
A four-hour drive apart just past London, the cities have much in common, from shuttered factories to gutted neighborhoods to faded histories. The Bills’ founding owner, Ralph Wilson, was close with the Ford family, which still owns the Lions. Wilson kept his office in Detroit, and for years the Bills and the Lions played preseason games. In 2022, the Bills played a home game in Detroit because of snowstorms in Buffalo.
The teams also share a dubious distinction: no Lombardi Trophies. The Lions are one of four teams that have never played in the Super Bowl. Before last season, they had won just one playoff game in 65 years, and their last N.F.L. title was in 1957, two months after the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik satellite. The Bills won two A.F.L. titles in the 1960s and played in four consecutive Super Bowls in the 1990s, but lost each time.
After long fallow periods, both teams now have high-powered offenses and gritty defenses that appeal to Canadian fans living between Buffalo and Detroit. That explained the nervous hope masquerading as optimism at Joe Kool’s.
“The rust bucket teams never sleep,” said Ross Cockburn, the longtime bartender, who began rooting for the Bills when O.J. Simpson was their running back. “If the Bills and Lions are in the Super Bowl, it’ll end in a tie.”
Last Sunday, the Bills played their second-stringers and lost to the New England Patriots to end the regular season. But they had already won their fifth straight A.F.C. East Division crown and were saving their strength for the Denver Broncos, whom they will face this Sunday.
The real tension began when the Lions faced the Minnesota Vikings, two teams with 14-2 records and no Super Bowl titles, later last Sunday. After a tight first half, the Lions ran away with the game, locking up the N.F.C. North Division title and earning a bye this weekend as the conference’s top seed.
“This year, I keep pinching myself,” said Darren Pyne, a Lions fan who did not want to jinx his team and left Joe Kool’s at halftime to go home and watch the second half in his “fortress of solitude.”
Canadian fans have other reasons to cheer. The Vikings, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks, all teams popular north of the border, had double-digit win totals this year, and all but the Seahawks qualified for the postseason.
Their success comes as the N.F.L. expands into international markets in search of new fans and revenue. More than a decade ago, the Bills played six regular-season games over six years in Toronto, an experiment that unnerved fans in Buffalo. Not only did their team lose five of those games, but they saw them as a prelude to the team’s moving.
The games, though, were not well received in part because they lacked tailgating and were played indoors. The Bills are building a new stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., ensuring they will stay put. But Toronto remains part of the Bills’ home market. About 10 percent of the team’s season-ticket holders are Canadian, and last year the Bills hired a new executive to expand the team’s presence in Ontario, including finding corporate sponsors and media partners.
“Ultimately, we’re doing whatever we can to theoretically erase the border and make sure people in southern Ontario and Toronto feel like they can be part of the Bills organization, or as close as possible,” said Pete Guelli, the team’s chief operating officer.
The Lions, the Seahawks and the Vikings are developing Canada as a market. About 5 percent of the Lions’ season-ticket holders are Canadian, mostly from Windsor, across the border from Detroit. The team has broadened its outreach, doubling its email list of Canadian fans in the past three years. Before Christmas, the Lions held a watch party in London with the team’s cheerleaders and Roary the mascot entertaining more than 3,000 fans.
London is roughly equidistant between Buffalo and Detroit and, with the success of the Bills and the Lions, has turned into an N.F.L. demilitarized zone. For years, fans in London received television signals that let them watch Browns and Lions games. But the league’s digital streaming package allows them to follow the Bills as well.
The ubiquity of the N.F.L. is one reason Reid Collins, 9, became a Bills fan. Wearing a Josh Allen jersey, he and his father, John, watched the Bills on televisions at the Dawghouse Pub, a 10-minute drive from Joe Kool’s. After following the Bills in the 1990s, “I had stopped watching them, but he got me into it again,” John Collins said. “It’s nice he picked it up.”
As at Joe Kool’s, there was a mix of N.F.L. fans at the Dawghouse, with patrons wearing Chargers, Cowboys, Giants and Packers caps and jerseys. With 14.5 million fans nationwide, the N.F.L. has more than two dozen corporate sponsors in Canada, two media packages and its own online store. The Super Bowl is the highest-rated program most years. Nearly three dozen Canadians play in the league.
“As long as the N.F.L. has been around, there’s been fans in Canada,” said Gavin Kemp, the general manager of the league’s office in Toronto.
As popular as the N.F.L. is, hockey remains king. Had the Canadian national team made it to the final round of the World Junior Championships last week, Joe Kool’s would have been packed with hockey fans. Instead, just one television showed the title game between the United States and Finland.
For the next few weeks, though, the N.F.L. will be front and center at Joe Kool’s, and throughout Canada. Bill Haddow, Charlie Smith’s 95-year-old grandfather, who attended the Lions’ title game in 1957 and had season tickets for many years, can’t wait.
“I’m nervous now because we’ve never been in this position,” he said.
