NFL commissioner Roger Goodell visited Jacksonville yesterday, and delivered one of those veiled threats that only sports league execs can do so well:
“We want the team to be successful and we want it to be here. We just want it to play in front of sold-out audiences.” …
Goodell was asked if sellouts this season would keep the team in Jacksonville.
“I think this team is going to continue to be successful here,” he said in response.
You think before you can become a commissioner, you have to go to protection racket school?
Meanwhile, the Jacksonville city council seems prepared to give the Jaguars an additional lease break, on top of the $4 million kickback they’re getting on their naming-rights deal. The new provision, which has been approved by two committees but hasn’t yet gone before the full council, would allow the team to pay for stadium maintenance in advance and then reimburse themselves from a pool of city money. It’s being sold as a way to allow the Jaguars to pay for costs as they arise and not when the city budget is ready, and it may be — but it also leaves open worries about the city having to reimburse the team for costs it didn’t approve or even know about beforehand.
Why don’t they just lower the ticket prices until they can fill the stadium? People are tightening their belts in this economy, and spending a huge amount of money for a few hours entertainment, that should be available on TV, is viewed as fiscally irresponsible for many families.
And it isn’t fair to take money from a community for a stadium or stadium renovations and then black out the games on TV because the stadium isn’t full (like the situation in Alameda County with the Raiders).
Frankly I can’t blame Goddell in this case. Jacksonville is one of the bottom dwellers when it comes to ticket sales (even with their artificially shrunken venue). And a team was placed in that city with the assurances that there was interest in the 90′s. Obviously that’s not turned out to be the case and if so then the NFL is well within it’s rights to move on. Goddell is just reminding Jacksonville of that.
The league made a gigantic mistake placing a team in Jacksonville. If the franchise would have been placed in any one of a half dozen other football starved cities it would not now be in its present situation. And that is begging fans in the area to buy tickets for games. San Antonio, Los Angeles, or Oklahoma City would all be terrific places to move the team. If only the commissioner and the powers that be in the league offices could see what having the Jaguars in Jacksonville represents. And that is a huge failure with no future.
While the bad economy in FL probably contributes to the ticket sales problems for the Jags, I think it’s possible to overrate how “starved” other locations are for pro-football.
At least at the with high priced season tickets and PSLs.
I can see a lot of people who like football determining that it’s just not worth it.
I don’t think the Jaguars will relocate far. I’m expecting the team to go to Orlando, Los Angeles, San Antonio & Toronto in that order. Goodell said he wants the team to stay in Florida and Weaver has mentioned playing two games in Orlando if they go to an 18-game season.
Los Angeles will get a team and I expect that to be the Raiders, I expect San Antonio or Toronto get the Buffalo Bills. The Vikings need their stadium or they are as good as gone by 2011, same with the Chargers.
Teams are going to have to start looking at what they have. Vikings & Chargers can leave after 2011, the Raiders after 2013 and the Bills once Ralph Wilson passes away as the family is forced in the will to sell the team.
I think you overestimate the ability of the teams to move, particularly with the LA stadium all but stalled right now. As for the Raiders, they’ll be going to Santa Clara now that the stadium there has been all but approved.
I agree with Dan. Relocation can’t happen when there aren’t any shovel-ready relocation/stadium options right now. Nobody is going to leave to go to a San Antonio or wherever without a stadium agreement in place. There’s no sense in risking a relocation somewhere only to continue trying to go through the same process they are already going through in their own market to build a stadium.
The musical chairs can’t begin until the LA project is up and going. Once (if) City of Industry happens, I think it will trigger at least 3 relocations within 5 years.
2 teams to LA; 1 team to relocate to a city which lost a team to LA
I think the NFL needs 2 teams in LA in order to continue their stadium racket. There are simply not very many good markets left to take an NFL team (between territorial disputes with other teams and few remaining markets of good size). San Antonio, Orlando or Oklahoma City does not make as good of a NFL relocation boogeyman as LA has (or San Diego or Minnesota would, if they lose their teams).
My guesses: Rams and Vikings to LA
one team is for sale, the other is owned by a carpetbagger who is trying to use an NFL franchise as a trojan horse for real estate (which the City of Industry stadium is tied to mega development). One has an state of the art escape clause, the other has an expiring lease.
The NFL has made a huge amount of money by not having a team in LA. How many times have we heard the rumblings about a team possibly moving there, only to have local politicos shovel public money into the NFL coffers until such talk quiets down (temporarily).
Without the looming threat of “Los Angeles”, the majority of the new stadia either would not have been built, or would have been much more modest facilities.
It’s certainly possible that a team will relocate. But the NFL (in particular smaller market owners who haven’t yet fleeced their local Gov’ts) might not be as crazy about the idea as you’d think.
Funny thing about public money for sports stadia, when the majority of the funds are tax dollars, the facilities tend to cost 3-5 times more than they do when the owner is building his own stadium. Hmmmmn. Makes you wonder how “necessary” some of those additions are, doesn’t it?
As bad as it might be in Jacksonville, the other options don’t offer much hope outside LA.
None of the supposedly “football starved” cities mentioned really have much in the way of corporate headquarters, which is really the key to sustaining the absurd costs of professional sports. Municipalities can build the stadium with public dollars (under the usual guise of “pride” or “creating jobs”) but its a lot harder to buy the tickets to the luxury seating. Cities like Memphis (outside of FEDEX, not much) are already learning this, and there will be more.
San Antonio is probably the best off, but it depends a lot on military/government jobs, which doesn’t go a long way to paying for a 250k skybox.
As has been said, lots of people like football, but lots of other people are figuring out that their cities would be nice, livable places for families even without an NFL team (and that cities with an NFL team, like Baltimore and Cleveland, aren’t necessarily nice). Minneapolis rank among those nice cities, and so do San An and OKC.