As promised, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan finally released her Jaguars stadium plan yesterday, in the form of a presentation to the city council. Let’s get straight to answering your questions about it — no, no need to ask actual questions, I’ve got that covered for you:
How much would the stadium renovation cost, and how much public money does Jaguars owner Shad Khan want?
Action News Jax reports that the total cost would be $1.7 billion, with $925 million coming from the city of Jacksonville, while Florida Politics calls it a $1.25 billion deal with a 50/50 split between the city and team.
You’re confusing me already.
In the form of a question, please!
Sorry. What’s the actual breakdown?
- $625 million from the city for the stadium renovation
- $625 million from Khan for the stadium renovation
- $150 million from the city for “maintenance costs on the existing structure,” which Deegan claims the city would have to spend either way
- $150 million apiece for “community development projects” including affordable housing, homelessness programs, and parks
Is that a lot of public money?
That all depends on how you look at it. Even if you count the deferred maintenance costs, $775 million is less than the $800 million to $934 million that was previously floated. And Deegan was quick to note that it’s less than Tennessee and New York taxpayers are spending on new stadiums for the Titans and Buffalo Bills, though those are whole new stadiums, not just renovations.
All that’s just anchoring, though. Some other ways to look at it:
- In exchange for a 30-year lease extension, $775 million comes to $25.8 million in present-day cost for each additional year Khan would promise to keep the Jags in town. That would be the third-highest cost per year of any pro sports renovation, behind only the Baltimore Ravens‘ $40 million a year and the New Orleans Saints‘ $30 million a year.
- That $775 million could build about 13 new schools, even at the inflated prices Jacksonville has been paying.
- It’s $775 million more than most Jacksonville residents or business owners would get from the city if they wanted to renovate their homes or offices.
- The city and Khan would be (roughly) splitting renovation costs evenly, but Khan would (presumably) continue to receive all revenues from the building, including naming rights.
Are there any hidden costs like tax breaks?
We don’t know yet, as Mayor Deegan didn’t include lease details in her presentation. We also don’t know, crucially, if there are any state-of-the-art clauses or other provisions that would allow Khan to demand more public money before the 30 years were up.
Is there a slideshow with lots of really big numbers?
Of course! Here’s one example:
That is number is indeed really big, in both value and type size! But is that real city revenue or just one of those “impact” numbers that means money changing hands anywhere in the city?
Mayor Donna Deegan says the deal will provide a whopping $26 billion of economic impact over the length of the 30-year lease. [Action News Jax reporter Ben] Becker pressed her on that number because economist’s says economic impact is not revenue for a city, revenue is tax dollars.
“Do we have a number on that, guys?” Deegan asked lead negotiator Mike Weinstein from the podium, but the number was not available.
What do economists say about it?
“I think they did a really good job marketing it,” says Kristi Sweeney who is a sports finance professor at the University of North Florida… “That is over-estimated I would say.”
Where will Jacksonville get the $775 million it would be spending?
Deegan has posted a really confusing explanation to her site, but it comes down to: If the city keeps a 0.5% sales tax surcharge to fund capital projects in place through 2030 instead of allowing it to end in 2026, that would let it pay for around $600 million in city projects to be funded by sales tax receipts instead of by borrowing. So the city could use the borrowing for Jaguars renovations instead, making that free money!
Does that make any sense?
No, and doubly not since once the capital projects sales tax expires, a different 0.5% sales tax to fund city pension costs will kick in. So extending the first tax just means an extra $600 million worth of pension money that the city has to come up with somewhere, eating up any windfall.
What does the city council think of all this?
Unclear. One councilmember, Jimmy Peluso, told Action News Jax that the community development money is a nice carrot, because “this is something that’s going to benefit the whole city.” Another, Rory Diamond, called it “exactly the same as it was last year, except now we have a new $150 million of spending that has nothing to do with the stadium” and called the pension fund switcheroo “both dangerous and just dishonest.” Most of the other 17 members of the council apparently weren’t available for comment, or were just distracted by the slideshow.
Would the Jaguars at least have to stop playing one home game a year in London?
“We will have the option — not the requirement — to play up to one home game a year” in London, [Jaguars President Mark] Lamping said.
Do we have a photo of Shad Khan showing the guy who’d be collecting the $775 million in tax money? Preferably on a yacht?
Is that a real photo?
What happens now?
Council president Ron Salem says he wants to pass at least the stadium renovation portion of the deal by the end of June, “but not at the expense of people still uncomfortable with the deal,” whatever that means. Also, does Salem mean the stadium part might pass without the community benefits part? If so, what would Khan’s incentive be to agree to the additional spending once he gets his stadium money?
I thought I was asking the questions here?
You’re right, sorry. But there are a whole lot of questions left to be answered, so one of us had better get cracking.
As with all these rosy “economic impact” figures, what they basically do is throw a dart at a dart board and whatever number it lands on, they add “million dollars.”
I’ve mentioned this before, but as someone who saw Orlando/Orange County get worked for a massive arena subsidy — for team owned by a figure who was many, many orders of magnitude more odious and revolting than even Shad Khan — I’ve learned to never underestimate the willingness (desperation?) of one-horse sports towns to hold onto their one “big league” team at great cost to the public. Staying a “big league” city is always more difficult and always far more costly than actually becoming one, but it’s not an accident that no single-team market has lost its only franchise in almost 30 years (and no, Oakland doesn’t count).
Also, on the mayor’s comparison of the stadium deals with the Bills and the Titans: those two projects will be partially funded by the states of New York and Tennessee respectively, whereas the state of Florida won’t be kicking in a dime for the Jags stadium — which is to say the sum total and the share of the costs borne by the average Jax resident is probably going to be higher than the average Buffalo or Nashville resident for their projects.
I would fully expect the Jax city council to rubber stamp this deal; there may be a protest vote or two in there, but it’ll be near-unanimous. I’m actually more interested in seeing how the NFL owners vote on this — are they still sold enough on Jacksonville as an NFL city that they’ll agree to keep a franchise there for 30 extra years, or will they want to set in motion an eventual relocation to a more lucrative market, whether it’s in the US, or (more likely) somewhere overseas?
Regarding any NFL vote, I suspect there won’t be much debate here. Shahid Khan is personally popular amongst his owner brethren, and that carries too much weight for any possible dissent. They’ll rubber-stamp the deal as well.
The biggest issue for the NFL to discuss will be where the Jaguars play during 2027, as that would be the season where the team has to relocate. Gainesville may have the bigger stadium, but Orlando has better transportation options. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone proposes a gimmick game at the Daytona Speedway, and of course, you can’t entirely rule out Greensboro.
Maybe they play the whole season in London as an experiment to test having a team based there full-time. Or maybe this is all a ruse so that when it falls apart the Jags say “we couldn’t make a deal so we’re going to move to London”
The UF stadium is also due to be renovated soon, and my hunch is they’ll have provisions for NFL-level upgrades that would be completed before the start of the Jags reno project. It would be much closer drive for most Jags fans than Orlando (or even Daytona), though selfishly, I’m hoping they do wind up playing in Orlando for a season or two…
You’re right. I hate to cast aspersions, but I suspect, the local media cannot be trusted to be impartial to this issue. Losing their only major pro team – an NFL team especially – would be a big blow to the local newspaper, radio and TV outlets and their advertisers.
Unlike the other sports that have a lot of games during the week, football relies mostly on people driving to the game, often from hours away, and a big portion of their revenue comes from national TV deals and national advertisers.
So they don’t have to fixate on being in the biggest markets. As long as a team can sell a lot of premium-priced seats, it doesn’t really matter where its stadium is.
So I can’t really imagine the other owners going out of their way to save Jacksonville as an NFL market.
But I also can’t really see why they’d be in a hurry to move them either. There really aren’t any clearly better options as long as London and/or Mexico City is considered too impractical.
Possibilities are San Antonio, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Greensboro, Oakland, San Diego, St Louis, Omaha, Salt Lake City, Portland, etc, etc. None of those cities has shown much (or any) interest in building an NFL stadium and none of them would really expand the NFL’s fanbase very much.
We are at peak football in this country. There’s really no more worlds left to conquer.
London and Mexico City are bigger than New York and Los Angeles, and would be huge additional potential fan bases. For example, Salt Lake City would add little, and competing with Utah – BYU could be even worse than competing with the Gators, Bulldogs and Seminoles in Jacksonville. If the NFL can play games in Munich and Sao Paulo, why not 8 games in London and Mexico City? Buffalo will still be in the middle of the lake effect snow belt, no matter how many billions are wasted on an open air stadium, the Bill’s should have moved to Toronto. Da 1985 Bears were beyond insanely popular, despite playing in the worst possible stadium imaginable. The condition of Soldier Field didn’t hurt their popularity at all. Same story with the 1991-1993 Bulls at the decrepit Chicago Stadium.
I am curious about players willing to sign with European or Mexican teams. The Vancouver Grizzlies had trouble signing players and that was ]less than an hour from the US border. Imagine how hard it would be to get guys to sign in London
Hockey players were weary of playing for the Nordiques back in the day because they were based in an exclusively French-speaking city, and the franchise itself also operated exclusively in French. The technology (and the world itself) has evolved enough that the language barrier can be overcome to some extent, any “major league” team in Mexico City, or anywhere in Mexico, would almost certainly run into the same types of problems the NHL did in Quebec City. In that sense, London might even be an easier sell than CDMX even though it’s much farther away distance-wise from any US region outside of maybe the Northeast.
But if basketball players have been resistant to Toronto I think London would be even more difficult. London would be even more of a challenge. Not only is it further away distance wise but it would be a bigger culture shock. Also, if you’re a racial minority London can be pretty miserable whereas Toronto is an upgrade from most of the US
The only reason why the Bills would move to Toronto is if they could get a free stadium in Toronto and not get one in Buffalo. Neither of those conditions have come to pass.
The people of western NY want to keep the Bills way more than Toronto wants to get an NFL team.
As it is, a lot of people from Southern Ontario already support the Bills. A lot of local Bills TV and radio content is available in the GTA and Buffalo is less than two hours from Toronto, give or take the border delays.
Apparently, 15% of Bills season ticket holders are Canadian, but their previous experiment in Toronto suggests they’d lose more fans by moving north than they would gain.
I’ve been told by Torontons that an NFL team there could attract a lot of corporate season ticket buyers who just want the cache of being part of the richest league in the world, but there is not a groundswell of demand for an NFL team there.
The Bills are not too far and Toronto already has the NBA, MLB, MLS and an NHL team that is staggeringly popular despite never winning anything. They also have the Argos who don’t draw particularly well.
It’s also a very rich city with a lot going on. Nobody in Toronto is worried about it not being perceived as a major city.
It’s disingenuous to say Shad Khan is “collecting the $775 million in tax money” when he is also shelling out at least that much of his own money to make the deal work.
How so? If I make $77,500 in upgrades to my house, and the city also pays for $77,500 in additional upgrades in my house, I’m still getting $77,500 from the city for work on my house.
In this scenario, the city would be the one getting all the benefits (which is not the case), but to keep it simple – It’s not his house. The city owns the stadium. Kahn is paying to upgrade the “house” he is renting.
“the city would be the one getting all the benefits”
Will the city be collecting the revenue from naming rights? Will the city be collecting the revenue from parking? Will the city be collecting revenue from concessions? If the city owns the stadium, it seems appropriate for it to get all the money generated by the stadium. It also seems appropriate for the Jaguars to pay rent.
Yeah, the city only owns the stadium so that Khan can get out of paying property taxes. Khan owns the revenue streams, which is what matters in this case.
Oh Jeremy please!
That simply is not done anymore!
Such bad form!
And who else besides Kahn benefits from this insane amount of renovation? How many Duval County residents have NEVER attended a Jaguars game? I’ll bet it’s way over 500,000, and probably approaching 75%. So all that sales tax money for a gold plated football stadium that’s used 12, maybe 15 times a year. That’s about 60 hours of time fans are actually in the stadium, or less than 1% of the time. As for $33 billion of economic impact, the Starship enterprise can accelerate to warp 5 in seconds, just ask Scotty to crank those warp engines.
You’re forgetting concerts! Soccer!
How many stadium sized concerts stop in Jacksonville? The Jacksonville Armada, if they are reactivated, can attempt to beat their record attendance of 16,164 in a renovated Everbank Stadium. Topping 20,000 attendance at a developmental league soccer game would clearly be worth $775 million.
Not many. Past year I think two concerts, George Strait & something. 8 Jags games, Monster Truck Jam, Taxslayer Gatorbowl ™️, Premier Soccer game. Let’s say I’m forgetting one, so…14 events. They don’t keep a record of past calendars, probably so everyone won’t see how it’s empty 350 days a year. I’m not convinced the Swiftees & Beyoncés would choose a Jacksonville stop when Tampa, Orlando etc are just 2 or 3 hours away. Popular bands often eschew Vystar Memorial & Tony Khan’s playground Dailys Place in favor of St Augustine’s Amphitheater & its superior acoustics. I have to drive 45 minutes to St Aug to see 311 for example. A Stadium is overkill for those kinds of bands. It’s really cringe how often Saint Augustine Amp pulls events away from our comparable amphitheaters, considering it’s build & renovations cost a 1/5th of what the Khan Cartel’s Dailys Place cost. They sold that one on “revitalizing downtown” as well. I’ve lived here almost 30 years & saw this city improve so much in the late 90’s/00’s, but that’s been getting reversed the past 10 years or so. More & more gets redirected to the Khan projects. It feels like they are vampires on the city’s neck.
I was being sarcastic.
I always see people online claiming that concerts and the occasional soccer match can fill out the calendar for an football stadium.
I asked Copilot & ChatGPT4.5 how many events were held at Everbank Stadium last year, including home games & concerts. It searched old even calendars & said 11 events, no concerts. Right in line with Sportico studies, it hovers at or below the 12.5/year average. A couple years events like Monster Jam were diverted to memorial arena because of Khan’s last multimillion stadium renovations. In 2022 there was….ONE concert. Lol.
Wow, I seriously can’t believe somebody showed up here to make this argument. Bravo, Martin!
Another community with no vote by the public on something like this? Where’s the County’s contribution?
Lord, this crap never ends. At least it’s Florida and not Austin.
Our “rich” school district is laying off staff because it’s broke. If a pro sports team showed up looking for a handout AISD would laugh in
their face. The City would tell them to try Greensboro.
Florida Man/Woman strikes again…..
This will come down to whether the NFL wants to stay in Jacksonville. The NFL owners voting on another owner’s lease is weird and sounds like an out for Khan just in case. The owners can do whatever they want with these teams after the Al Davis Raiders lawsuit.
What will probably happen is the NFL Owners rejecting this proposal if passed and then press Jacksonville with changes to the lease, the subsidy, and adding the entertainment district around the stadium while hanging relocation over the city.
The NFL has become gun-shy on clubs hopscotching after the Rams returned to Los Angeles with next to no warning. The city of St. Louis sued the NFL over such carpetbagging — and won a settlement for $790 million.
Shahid Khan won’t go hopscotching the Jaguars cos the NFL will get socked with damages in the billions.
The situation with St. Louis was that the Rams and NFL killed STL’s plan for a new stadium while actively trying to move the team for years. The Jaguars are actually checking all of the legal boxes right now. Negotiating with the city and having community meetings are in the NFL guidelines. Chargers, and Raiders did all this before ALL THREE moved lol…(Great Job NFL). The Rams just didn’t negotiate (refused to*) with St. Louis.
The oversimplified version is the NFL lead St Louis to believe they had a chance to keep the team and the internal documents indicated the team wasn’t even considering it. St Louis had an offer for a new stadium on the table. If the Jacksonville doesn’t approve the deal, they won’t have any grounds to sue.
Many legal experts felt the NFL could eventually prevail in the St. Louis lawsuit, but STL had a lot more embarrassing documents the NFL didn’t want coming out in court, so they settled. Save your receipts Jacksonville. They may come in handy.
Just get over this Jacksonville stuff, it’s a town nobody cares about, even in Florida. SEC rivalries, and Florida vs Florida State are big in North Florida, and the Georgia vs Florida fans will come to Jacksonville regardless of whether the stadium is renovated or if the Jaguars stay. There’s your economic development.
Miami/Fort Lauderdale/Palm Beach, Orlando and Tampa dominate Florida. Even with the Jaguars, Jacksonville is off the radar of 99% of Florida visitors, except as a speed bump on I-95. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to London and collect £200 million a year. Realign London to the AFC North and Miami to the AFC South, and travel for division rivals won’t be much more than the West Coast. The NFL will not only add a metro area larger than New York or Los Angeles, there will be a 10am game every other week for another multi billion dollar TV deal. How much revenue can a stadium renovation in Jacksonville possibly create?
Maybe the conditions aren’t there yet for an NFL franchise in London? Maybe there’s a whole slate discussions and negotiations over UK labor laws, immigration laws, international business rules, tax regulations and exemptions, etc etc, that still need to be had for a potential permanent business with a year-round presence, as opposed to one whose longest single “business trip” so far has amounted to roughly 10 days?
Maybe the NFL is just content to keep giving all 32 franchises an opportunity to use London (and, increasingly, Germany and the rest of Europe) as a cash cow, as opposed to letting a single franchise essentially bogart the entire market for itself?
I don’t think people realize just how far off into the future the idea of an overseas NFL franchise is — or, for that matter, what it actually takes for an NFL franchise to move from one *American* city to another in this day and age. The days of teams hauling all their inventory into a fleet of Mayflower trucks and fleeing the city in the middle of the night are long gone. These things take years and years to materialize, and still there are plans that sometimes come together at the 11th hour to “save” these teams from leaving.
London at least has a stadium (multiple stadiums, I suppose) that could accommodate the NFL right now. None of the other US cities considered for a team can really say that.
They could overcome the legal and tax issues by throwing enough money at it, I suppose.
And they could continue to make money off the continent even with a team in London. They would probably have to anyway, because it would make more sense for teams that went to London to stay over there another week to play another game in Europe before coming home. (likewise for the team from London coming to the US).
The players won’t like that, but perhaps they’ll be ok with it if they get paid more accordingly.
But travel is still a major impediment.
There is at least one company that claims their jet will go from New York to London in 3.5 hours. That’s significantly faster than LA to New York is now. But it will be a few years before that’s ready and I assume it will be very expensive.
And even if all of that’s possible, it doesn’t fix the time-zone/jet lag problem. As I recall, studies have shown that travelling across multiple time zones impedes athletic performance, especially if it’s west to east.
That may be BS. I’m not an exercise physiologist. I just read that somewhere. But it will be a hardship on the players and may make it difficult for the London team to get free agents or even get draft picks to sign.
We cannot make the earth spin faster. I’m sure the owners have asked about that, but I doubt they’ve had much luck.
Taking a daytime flight in a really comfortable seat, and going directly to the hotel for dinner is an instant cure for jet lag versus landing at 6am after a taking red eye in coach.
A daytime flight across the Atlantic for someone from the East Coast means their bodies will still be on 5-7pm by the time bedtime hits in London or Paris. That takes some adjusting for mere regular tourists and businessmen; for throngs of 50+ pro athletes with regimented routines, dietary considerations, injury maintenance, general wear and tear of football, and all the other things to consider, there’s basically no “instant cure” that will help them get even practice-ready immediately in a different continent multiple time zones away.
We as Americans are so conditioned into exalting the healing powers of (seemingly) unlimited money and resources that we think even physiological conditions like jet lag can be made to go away by simple throwing a bunch of Benjamins at it. If only we could actually hear ourselves as we do this…
Do you not believe the NFL can invent time travel and teleportation? Why do you hate America?
Yeah they can bring back the Concorde, or even introduce teleportation, and the effects on the body would still be a major issue for the athletes.
In the end, just think about how long it took for all of the Rams, Chargers, and Raiders’ recent relocations to materialize, and how they were just about moving from one American city to another. There’s bound to be more complications with placing a franchise in another country, whether by expansion or relocation. As it stands, there’s nothing in it for any franchise to move across the pond aside from potential increases in local revenue and valuation — which ultimately might be enough for a more blinkered owner, but might well cause more headaches than relief in the long run.
It didn’t take that long for those teams to move once their new stadiums were under construction. If the NFL is going to play at Wembley or another big stadium that is going to be built for the EPL anyway, that would not be an impediment.
Presumably, the groundwork for a team in London has been happening for many years. I don’t know that for a fact, but so many reporters have said they’re looking into it that I assume they’ve hired consultants to work on these issues.
If all the logistical challenges could be handled, a team in London would be worth way more than a team in Jacksonville, St Louis, San Antonio etc.
I think the main impediment would be to get the players on board.
Some of the other owners may be reluctant too for all the reasons stated above. These are not exactly innovative, far-sighted people.
I can’t think of a reason why a London team would be worth a lot more than a Jacksonville team. The NFL would take all the TV money, so what would be the big moneymaker, luxury suites?
“It didn’t take that long for those teams to move once their new stadiums were under construction.”
Of course… after those teams had spent a decade-plus trying to get said stadiums built somewhere, anywhere, at a price point that made sense for them. And assuming there’s a resolution to the Jaguars’ situation in the coming months, I can’t point to another franchise that either has a stadium situation that “needs” addressing or would realistically leave their current market for another.
Granted, it’s entirely possible the NFL could vote down any version of the agreement between Jaguars and the city of Jax — which honestly would feel like one of the greatest pieces of villainy in the history of pro sports business, but I digress — but even then, so much would have to go right for any overseas move to come together after that. Like I said, people look at sports franchise movements as if they were board games when these things always happen against the backdrop of years and years of negotiations (both public and behind closed doors), lawsuits, double-dealing, and outside interferences.
Since Thatcher, London has become, to a large extent, a place for plutocrats to wash their money and reputations.
So I’m assuming London NFL would be worth more just because its London and that sounds cool. The valuations of these franchises diverged from reality a while ago.
The luxury suites are a good question, however. I don’t know if the international .001% will be as interested in the NFL as they are in the Premiership. We have not seen the Saudis try to buy an NFL team yet, for example.
However, having a suite at the London NFL would be a nice perk for firms trying to entertain American investors and American executives based in London. And England is certainly trying to lure investors right now.
I’m sure the NFL has paid a consultant to figure out if all that is true.
Oh, to add one more thing.
I can’t see why the NFL would vote down this deal with Jax if Khan wants it and the city is going to pay at least half of it.
The last thing any of these owners – except Al Davis – ever want to do is cross another member of their club.
Barring the invention of teleportation in the next five years, there is no other option that is so much better for the league as a whole that they’d want to fight Khan over this.
Not to be all “That can’t be a $10 bill in the gutter or someone would have picked it up already,” but I can’t help but think that if a London team were that valuable, we would have one by now.
Would it be good for the NFL as a whole to have a team in London? Probably. Would it be good for whichever owner got stuck actually playing there? Not so much, for all the reasons cited by others here.
The point about the Saudis not yet being involved in the NFL is an interesting one. In a weird way, the NFL franchise valuations skyrocketing in this way might even end up being a *bad* thing, because we could eventually get to a point where only private equity and/or sovereign investment funds (e.g. PIF) are able to take these teams over without a significant level of financing. That feels like the next frontier.
I don’t think it will be that valuable until the figure out how to make the travel less onerous. It’s possible that they never will.
The merchandise sales in London would be krazzy, Manchester City and United, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and FC Bayern Munchen sell tons of stuff. NFL London woud do just as well, who gets the NFL merchandise revenue, each team or the league?
Dont the teams get the revenue from deals with local TV stations, that could add up to alot if all of England is a local TV market. Germany appears to be a great market for a couple of games a year, and having London play an opponent one or two games a year in Germany might be interesting. Then only one team would have to cross the pond.
Spending 4 or 5 days in London adjusting to a 5 hour time change isn’t that tough. Playing on Thursday night, and Wednesday night when the NFL finds another TV partner willing to pay billions, is cruel and unusual punishment. The players should demand a 16 game season, and if the NFL wants to have more weeks to broadcast, then add more bye weeks.
The league gets the merch revenue, not individual owners. And there is effectively no local TV revenue for NFL teams.
“one of the greatest pieces of villainy in the history of pro sports business”
That sounds like a challenge to John Fisher. to up the ante on his own villainy.
The NFL doesn’t care about the health of their players or the quality of competition at the moment, as evidenced by the amount of midweek games at the end of the season and Thursday night games. They might as well move the Jags overseas and spare the city of Jacksonville the expense of making the stadium slightly better. Can’t imagine Khan wouldn’t relish having the attention of an entire country rather than a tiny Florida market.
The owners, collectively if not individually, only care about revenue. They are going to push for 18 games and more midweek games.
But the NFLPA has to agree to that. That gives them some leverage.
More revenue for the league could just mean a higher salary cap, but hopefully the players will use the next negotiations to get better conditions for all its players rather than just keep adding millions to the stars’ salaries. I mean, if Patrick Mahomes contract was worth $300m instead of $450m, he’d still have more money than he can ever spend but a lot more alums would have better insurance and pensions.
Sure, since the public is paying for so much of this anyway, that money should all come out of the owners’ cartel. In fact, there should not be owners. All the teams should be anarcho-syndicalist communes.
But they’re not and they are not going to be soon. So the union has to do what it can for all it’s members.
Apropos of nothing, but schools in Jax are being shuddered due to lack of funds. Proponents of this deal will claim colors of money, but it still shows where priorities lie.
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/education/duval-county-parents-stunned-by-proposal-to-close-multiple-schools-dcps-duval-county-public-schools-proposal-education-florida-buget-gap/77-3f48fb2a-6c95-4d39-8668-150b1f84cc23
I’ve come to believe that a lot of voters and politicians want to starve public education, not because they genuinely believe the public can’t afford it, but because they just don’t want the public to be educated.
A lot of money for 8 or 9 games a year that stadium will be used not counting exhibition nonsense games and maybe one concert a year.
But you’re forgetting the soccer friendlies!! That will save the project! And Taylor Swift! Won’t somebody think of poor Taylor Swift!
Hmm, for $775 million, you might get Taylor Swift to do a year long residency in Jacksonville that would bring in far more than the Jags.
I recall how the economic impact from Taylor Swift concerts was being loudly proclaimed. Perhaps the way to fund this stadium is to have Taylor perform 6 concerts and use those revenues to fund the stadium. Problem solved . . . (tongue was firmly implanted in cheek while typing this)
I wonder if the current players contract has language that prohibits kneeling for the anthem. If it doesn’t I think it would be cool if the Jags all take a knee next year just to see what happens. It is Florida
Actually if they took a knee for public education that would be interesting. I would think/hope it would be a good PR move for the players
Jacksonville/Duval County is a purple zone politically, with a liberal trend common to pretty much every metro area in America. The rest of the Jax metro area is *extremely* red, including St Johns County to the south (which is where a lot of the new growth in the area is taking place).