Promises, promises.

In formal written submissions, rocker Jon Bon Jovi and his bid partners always stopped short of promising the Ralph Wilson trust they would not move the Buffalo Bills to Toronto.

So says a QMI Agency source closely involved in the now-completed sale process.

The source backed up that contention by revealing the group’s best attempt at a written non-relocation pledge, sent last month to Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that conducted the sale for the trust.

But first things first. Asked if the rocker ever signed a waiver pledging to keep the NFL team long-term in Western New York, the source said:

“Absolutely not. He did not sign any such document.

“At most, he would have only signed a pledge that he would not move the team until 2020 or 2023, when the lease terms are up. Never would he have signed something saying he wouldn’t move the team after the lease term.”

The Bills are in Year 2 of a virtually unbreakable 10-year lease of Ralph Wilson Stadium. There is an out in 2020 for $28.4 million.

While the Bills sale process ended Tuesday when Terry and Kim Pegula bought the club (pending league approval Oct. 8), the process swam in melodrama all summer. Bon Jovi’s group kept canon-balling into the deep-end of it, always over the non-relocation issue.

Only when backed to the wall did the rocker and his high rollers -- MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum and Edward Rogers, representing his family’s financial interests -- provide even an insufficient promise to keep the Bills in Buffalo.

It happened in early August, days after the trio learned their non-binding offer for the Bills of $800 million to $900 million (that specific range) was deemed uncompetitive. Morgan Stanley allowed the trio to resubmit with a more lucrative offer. The caveat: also provide a more convincing written assurance they would not move the NFL team to Toronto.

In their resubmission -- dated Tuesday, Aug. 4 -- the three principals upped their non-binding offer range to $1.0 billion to $1.1 billion, and wrote the following as their non-relocation pledge, as passed along by the source:

“We remain committed to working collaboratively to finance and build a new stadium in the Buffalo area in order to develop a long-range stadium solution for the Buffalo fans and Buffalo community.

“After purchasing the team, we intend to work with the state, city, county, business community and the New Stadium Working Group to identify a site and develop a plan to finance and build a new stadium in Buffalo.”

The words are similar to what Bon Jovi had penned in a letter to Bills fans, published just two days earlier in the Buffalo News.

On cursory read, the above pledge might seem to suffice. But parse it out and you see the clever, subtly evasive language. When you go no further in a legal document than to state you are “committed” to doing something, or merely “intend” to “work” on doing something, you are deliberately leaving yourself ample room to wiggle out and never follow through.

The trust, Morgan Stanley and the trust’s law firm, Proskauer Rose, immediately deduced as much, and demanded a more clearly expressed long-term commitment to Buffalo.

The group did not provide one. Morgan Stanley threatened to not advance the group to the final phase, as QMI Agency reported at the time. But because no other plausible bidder then had stepped forward to threaten the Pegulas (behind the scenes it was understood the NFL never would approve Donald Trump, the only other finalist), the trust on Aug. 9-10 weekend had little choice but to grudgingly move Bon Jovi’s group along.

The group never provided any further non-relocation assurance, the source said.

If Bon Jovi and his partners truly wanted to convince the trust and its legal team that their about-face was in earnest, they could have furthermore written, “We promise not to move the Bills from Western New York beyond the current lease,” or some such thing.

Many observers still wonder why the trio did not do just that: simply lie and communicate the words everyone in Western New York wanted to hear -- needed to hear -- in order to believe them.

After all, not doing so destroyed the trio’s chances of winning the bid, and probably would have done so even if the group had possessed the wherewithal to offer $1.5 billion. (As it was, the group submitted a binding bid on Monday of $1.05 billion.)

One source insisted the three men are too honourable to even consider such a dishonest business tactic. Another source described it as a case of pre-emptive legal butt-covering. That is, if their relocation bid had ever wound up in front of a judge, having used unequivocally false language to cloak their real intentions would not have gone over well.

So in the end the trio chose to “twist themselves into knots,” as one source put it, with their hedged pledge.

Such pretzel logic proved a tough swallow -- for everyone. Even them.