The Jaguars have completed their annual visit to London, playing this year for the first time two straight games there. They continue to have an unresolved situation regarding their stadium in America.
In a conversation with Gene Frenette of the Florida Times-Union, Jaguars owner Shad Khan was asked to peg his level of confidence that a deal will be done for renovation of EverBank Stadium by the preferred deadline of the second quarter of 2024.
“I’m very optimistic,” Khan told Frenette. “Mayor [Donna] Deegan was here [in London] for the Falcons game and was very active with the city officials.”
Khan also was asked whether the situation is “nerve-racking because it’s so public and the subject of so much news coverage.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Khan told Frenette. “We’ve talked about this before. Everything that’s important in sports gets magnified to the nth degree. All my business failures were never on the sports page. So you have ups and downs, but this thing is important to the city and all the fans. It’s sports, so it gets local and national media coverage. We want to get to a place that’s good for everyone.”
The key word is “everyone.” It’s clear that, if everyone in Jacksonville had a say, $1 billion in taxpayer money would not be devoted to the renovation project, even if it meant the team leaving. This becomes a situation in which elected officials decide what “everyone” should want, even if many or most of “everyone” do not.
That’s not exclusive to Jacksonville. No NFL city would approve a ballot measure to give free money to billionaires for new or improved stadiums. The elected officials in most cities where the NFL does business are willing to override the will of the electorate, for a variety of reasons.
So if/when (likely, when) Khan gets what he wants, will he once again play all home games in Jacksonville? He was asked that question. And the answer was not “yes.”
“We want to think about this as we see how this whole thing has worked,” Khan said. “There is a third part here, the NFL. Right now, whether it was Mayor Deegan or Mayor [Sadiq] Khan or the [U.K.] fans, everyone thinks it’s been a great experiment over the last decade for the Jacksonville Jaguars playing games here. It’s been great for businesses in the city to get exposure on a global scale. As you look at it right now, it’s something we want to do and we want to be doing it for the long haul, given how well it’s worked out. But you can’t decide that today.”
Khan would like to keep a foot in both boats, having a first-rate stadium in Jacksonville and a foothold (and a fanbase) in London. Now that the Jaguars seem to be on the verge of consistently contending, the English fanbase could end up getting bigger and bigger.
