One Team Town: What the Jaguars Reveal About Jacksonville’s Pro Sports Problem
On November 30, 1993, the NFL formally awarded an expansion franchise football team to Jacksonville, Florida.
The New York Times called the news “a totally unexpected move,” noting the city’s relatively small size and the presence of two larger cities — Baltimore and St. Louis — on the list of bidders.
And in fact, the city had dropped out of the bidding altogether just one year prior. The ownership group, spearheaded by shoe magnate Wayne Weaver, had already named the team after a 1991 contest, but lost confidence one year later in the city’s willingness to negotiate a stadium deal.
But winds changed. The southeast found support among NFL higher-ups, and a stadium deal came into view. The promise of a budding city in rural north Florida — a state that already boasted two NFL teams — proved too exciting to pass up.
The offer was accepted, a stadium deal was finalized, and the Jacksonville Jaguars played their first game in the new Jacksonville Municipal Stadium on September 3, 1995.
Since that day, not one other pro sports franchise has ever formally considered moving to Jacksonville.
It’s not that Jacksonville hasn’t grown. Since 1995, the city’s population has grown by almost 30%. It’s GDP has almost tripled. The number of passengers handled at Jacksonville International Airport increased from 4.8 million in 1995 to more than 7.3 million in 2023.
By many accounts, the city has beat even the most optimistic projections about its growth.
But something about northeast Florida — and, perhaps, about the Jaguars itself — has kept pro sports franchises away.
It doesn’t help that Jaguars’ on-field performance has been lackluster. They are the fifth-losingest franchise in the NFL. They’ve sent fewer players to the Pro Bowl than any other team. They have just eight playoff wins since 1995, and only four since 2000.
Wins, of course, are well-correlated with a team’s value. A winning team draws more fans to games. All-star players boost jersey and merchandise sales.
But teams don’t have to win for the franchise to be successful. Across the genre of pro sports, a number of franchises have gained considerable value even while struggling on the field. The Dallas Cowboys, for example, have just one more playoff win than the Jaguars since 1995, yet are estimated to be twice as valuable. The Sacramento Kings have won just 39.6% of their games since 2010, yet have been one of the NBA’s fastest-growing franchises during that time.
The Jaguars, however, are only worth an estimated $4 billion, placing them among the NFL’s least valuable franchises. That the team faces no local competition from any other pro sports franchise (or major college athletics program) makes this fact especially notable.
The Jacksonville metro area is home to more than 1.7 million people, and has grown at an average of 1.42% annually since 2000. Why have the Jaguars struggled to build value in this market? And, more importantly for the city, why does the team remain Jacksonville’s only pro sports team?
The list of new entries into the roster of cities hosting a pro sports franchise has ballooned in recent years. Nashville, Houston, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas have all added NFL teams since 1995. Memphis, Oklahoma City, and New Orleans have all added NBA teams since 2000. The MLS was founded in 1996 and sports 29 teams, none of which ever began negotiations to settle in Jacksonville (Orlando, Miami, and Tampa have all hosted MLS teams). The WNBA, founded in 1997, has 12 teams today and six others that have folded — none of them ever began formal negotiations with Jacksonville, yet have settled and found success in considerably smaller markets like Norwich, Connecticut and and Portland, Oregon.
Sure, downtown Jacksonville is no stranger to high-quality sports entertainment. The Jumbo Shrimp and Jacksonville Icemen games — minor league baseball and hockey, respectively — draw hundreds of thousands of fans annually, and the city is home to a growing roster of semi-pro soccer teams.
But the Jaguars remain, after almost 30 years since their founding, the city’s only pro team. And it’s relationship with the city has been rocky. In 2012, Shahid Khan purchased the Jaguars and immediately began touting plans to develop empty land around the stadium, notably the riverfront, the Shipyards, and what’s come to be known as “Lot J.” But now, more than a decade later (and with the exception of Daily’s Place), construction is only just getting started. Years of negotiations between city officials and Khan’s development firm, Iguana Investments, have repeatedly failed to win over voters. Even finalized proposals, such the 2020 Lot J proposal, failed to pass after voters expressed significant concern about the $233 million of public funding involved in the deal.
Today, cranes can be seen moving steel beams around an empty riverfront lot just south of the stadium, laying the foundations for a new Four Seasons Hotel slated to open in 2026. But negotiations for that project began as early as 2017 as part of a much broader Shipyards development plan. City officials approved a $387 million incentives deal for the hotel and other of the proposed riverfront properties in January 2023. Yet economic data shows neither the population nor the private investment necessary to support these ventures downtown — a fact buttressed by the failure of the Jacksonville Downtown Investment Authority to reverse the exodus of businesses and residents.
And of course, this past June, the Jacksonville City Council passed Mayor Donna Deegan’s and Khan’s stadium deal — a mammoth proposal entailing a $775 million commitment by the city to renovate the Jaguars’ stadium (now called Everbank Stadium, it’s fifth name in 18 years). Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times more than it cost to the build the stadium. This was passed, of course, on the condition that the Jaguars don’t leave — a prospect that has hung over fans since the franchise’s earliest days, and that took on renewed urgency when the team began playing one home game every year in a London stadium now owned by Khan.
The deal passed without much fanfare. But a June University of North Florida poll, conducted after city officials revealed the proposed stadium deal, showed that 43% of voters opposed the full stadium renovation deal as-written, and 58% opposed the deal without its pledged funds for community investment. Notably, 72% of voters said the deal should be put before the voters in the form of a referendum — a prospect city officials rejected from the start.
Just 3% of voters said the Jaguars and the stadium are their top priority for the investment of city tax dollars.
The fact is, an environment like this is will not entice other sports franchises.
But at the end of the day, this is about more than voters’ feelings and opinions. Diagnosing Jacksonville’s pro sports problem isn’t easy. The Jaguars’ poor performance and often-strained relationship with the city are only a few pieces of the larger economic and cultural puzzle that determines a pro sports franchise’s success.
But if anyone knows best what’s going on with Jacksonville’s sports, the Jaguars’ front office does. It’s Khan’s money on the line, after all. And despite the many obstacles he’s faced investing in this city, and the gripes he’s voiced along the way, he’s stayed committed.
So perhaps Jaguars president Mark Lamping unwittingly described the real elephant in the room last September when he framed then-ongoing stadium renovation negotiations as an ultimatum:
“If Jacksonville loses an NFL team, they’re never going to get another one.”
