It used to be more common in the NFL for teams to use preseason games to play a game in a nearby city that did not have an NFL team.
The Jags have two home preseason games. Why not play one of them in a rotating series of cities within driving distance of Jacksonville. Options include:
* Orlando
* Daytona Beach
* Gainesville
* Tallahassee
* St Augustine
Jags could do some marketing and would get a lot of free publicity from those towns local sports media. This could help TV ratings, merchandise sales and in the areas within 90 minute drives could drive sales of regular season games.
I feel like Jags should be embraced more by the region and this could help.
And what stadium in St Augustine or Daytona Beach do you think is capable of holding 50k spectators?
(07-08-2017, 08:24 AM)DragonFury Wrote: [ -> ]And what stadium in St Augustine or Daytona Beach do you think is capable of holding 50k spectators?
None, obviously. How often do we have 50,000 fans actually attend a preseason game? I would argue that if you can get tens of thousands of fans to turn out from the St Augustine or Daytona area that have a great time, then you will increase the overall fan base in the area surrounding Jacksonville.
Sure, as long as the cost of my season tickets was decreased by one game.
They could play both preseason home games in Orlando and Tallahassee for all I care as long as they cut the cost of those games out of the season ticket prices. I think most season ticket holders would feel the same way, too.
Of course you won't see that happening because they make more money making the home team fans pay for tickets to exhibition games than they'd ever get from people in nearby cities paying to see those games on their own.
That's why they had to send a regular season game to London, and not a preseason one, because even overseas they don't want to pay for exhibition games, they want the real thing, too. So to keep the money at its max they make the local fans pay for the exhibition games and then take away one of their real home games. Essentially raising the price of the real games for the home fans, which used to cost the ticket's face value plus 25% of the charge for a preseason game, and now with only 7 real games in the package each one costs the face value plus about 29% of the charge for a preseason game. (If you're like myself and consider the exhibition games to be essentially worthless)
One in Orlando would be doable (would the Tampa Bucs object to the League Office?) but SA and Daytona aren't good options. Tallahassee and Gainesville are interesting options, why not?
Back on Orlando and the Bucs, why not let each team play a pre-season game there? Win-win.
Would the $$ numbers work though? Right now they have the ST base locked into both games in Jax, whether they go or not. How many would make the journey to any of the above cities- 30%? 80%? And, would the non-ST locals in those cities make up the difference?
Just have the Jags and Bucs do a week of joint practices in Orlando for the fans of either team to come watch and get rid of the preseason games or turn them into regular season games. Also, increase the gameday active roster and the practice squad roster limits to accommodate for the extended regular season.
If Savannah has a football stadium or other appropriate venue (I don't think they do), it would be a cool place to hold a week of joint practices with the Falcons as well. Or the Jags could just stay in Orlando for another week of joint practices with the Dolphins, though I think it's ideal for these hypothetical joint practices to be with teams in the other conference.
(07-08-2017, 08:28 AM)TealHammer Wrote: [ -> ] (07-08-2017, 08:24 AM)DragonFury Wrote: [ -> ]And what stadium in St Augustine or Daytona Beach do you think is capable of holding 50k spectators?
None, obviously. How often do we have 50,000 fans actually attend a preseason game? I would argue that if you can get tens of thousands of fans to turn out from the St Augustine or Daytona area that have a great time, then you will increase the overall fan base in the area surrounding Jacksonville.
There aren't 50,000 fans in attendance but there are at least 50,000 seats sold. If a stadium in Daytona Beach holds only 10,000 and a ticket costs $60 on average, that's $2.4 million lost in revenue to the team.
They don't believe the additional external market exposure is worth the lost revenue baked into the existing ticket and other revenues at the stadium. Economically, it is a losing proposition for the team.
(07-08-2017, 10:42 AM)ATLjag Wrote: [ -> ]They don't believe the additional external market exposure is worth the lost revenue baked into the existing ticket and other revenues at the stadium. Economically, it is a losing proposition for the team.
That's likely the case. And as much as this organization has screwed up football in the Khan era, they are SHARP businessmen.
I would just suggest that if you could make Orlando/ Tallahassee/ Gainesville/ Daytona a Jag first area, that would be worth a lot more than lost ticket revenues. That wouldn't necessarily be easy and it would not be a sure thing, unlike preseason ticket sales you force your season ticket owners to buy BUT for the long term health of team I wish it would happen.
(07-08-2017, 10:42 AM)ATLjag Wrote: [ -> ]They don't believe the additional external market exposure is worth the lost revenue baked into the existing ticket and other revenues at the stadium. Economically, it is a losing proposition for the team.
It wouldn't be a losing proposition if they're selling far more tickets in the other stadium.
From what I heard a while back, the ocean center in Daytona is actually very close to meeting the standard's for how big an NFL stadium must be, it's only off by a few meters or so
Wasn't Daytona trying to make accommodations to the speedway not too long ago to be able to host an NFL game?
Given the fact that the preseason games represent 20% of the Season Ticket Package around the NFL (2 of 10 total home games), to make the season ticket holders "whole" as we only have 7 regular season home games per season, they should move 1 preseason game away from Jacksonville every 4th year. As a result, we'd experience 7 preseason games and 28 regular season games in a 4 year period -- that equates to 20% preseason games based on 35 games in total.
The Jaguars retain all profits from home preseason games for television broadcast and commercial revenue, in-stadium advertising, parking, food and beverage sales, merchandise sales, and anything else you can generate revenue from. They don't have to share that with the rest of the league, and only a small portion gets kicked back to the city under the current lease agreement.
They would lose a big chunk of money by giving all of that up to play in a venue that can't accommodate an NFL team otherwise where they'd have to pay rent, and cover the cost of moving the entire operation to a secondary location for a preseason game.
Whether the butts are in seats or not, there are more than 50k tickets sold to each preseason game. Every penny of that is profit to the team, and not part of the revenue sharing program with the league.
It's a matter of economics. When you're on the lower end of the revenue stream compared to bigger market teams, you have to squeeze every possible bit you can from those preseason games. That's why they're also scheduling concerts at Daily's Place, and creating an entire event atmosphere around games, including the preseason. It's about making money. You take those preseason games out of Jax, and it cuts into their revenue. I doubt you'll see that happening.
(07-08-2017, 08:23 PM)knarnn Wrote: [ -> ]Wasn't Daytona trying to make accommodations to the speedway not too long ago to be able to host an NFL game?
They spent more than $400 million to renovate the speedway to accommodate other sporting events, particularly football related. College or pro. They're fine either way.
.... on the bright side of losing, our season ticket prices have remained the same over the decade of demise.
(07-10-2017, 04:47 PM)HURRICANE!!! Wrote: [ -> ].... on the bright side of losing, our season ticket prices have remained the same over the decade of demise.
I'm actually paying slightly more now for my season tickets than I did when we were still getting all 8 regular season games and the preseason. When they took the game away for London, they bumped up the ticket prices so that what I was paying was the same.
May as well do some practices because lets be honest, nobody cares about preseason.