The London Jaguars Will Continue to Play Games in Jacksonville

Published on 4-Feb-2020 by J Square Humboldt

Football - NFL    NFL Daily Update

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The London Jaguars Will Continue to Play Games in Jacksonville

Its city fathers may not admit it, but when viewed in the harsh light of cold reality, Jacksonville backed into being awarded an NFL franchise in 1993.

The Shield's owners favored welcoming the St Louis Stallions and Baltimore Bombers into their cushy, money-spinning fraternity.

They liked that these two cities had proven NFL fan bases and corporate sponsors, tacitly admitting their franchises both left town due to the whims of their cabal's two biggest jerks.

 

For most of the Jacksonville Jaguars' history, they've looked like a franchise the NFL settled for.

When the team's most accomplished QB -- Mark Brunell -- was traded to the Jags, his notorious first question was, where's Jacksonville?

The irony is it's the largest city by population in Florida and the USA's largest by area. However, there's a dearth of corporate headquarters to snap up big-buck sponsorships, and ticket sales usually lag among the NFL's bottom three.

 

Those figures are boosted by the Jags' annual visit to London, where games there count towards around 13% of their 'local' revenue. With that in mind, what's an owner to do?

What else?

Go East more often, OG.

 

Happy hour math -- as opposed to industrial-strength accounting calculations -- pencils the Jags to improve their 'local' revenue bottom line by another 13% or so if Shad Khan moved another home game to Jolly Old.

So he did.

 

The players definitely have a point.

Predictably, based on the fans' rolling tweet excerpts in that report, this news isn't exactly pleasing the Jags' locals on this side of the pond.

 

It sounds like Khan is laying out the chessboard quite cleverly:

  • OG already has a presence in London, owning Fulham FC -- currently in English soccer's second division -- in a posh part of town,
  • He's positioning himself to expand the Jags' physical presence with his proposed entertainment district adjacent to the stadium:

 

  • Meanwhile, he's raking it in at Wembley Stadium, which he can dangle in front of the Jacksonville officials with hints of even more games there if they balk at his entertainment district financing demands.

Either way, Khan's gonna make more money or he's gonna make more money.