Quote:If you look at past relocations there's almost an established playbook for how to move a team. It starts with an old stadium with low revenue streams. Then the owner starts demanding small concessions from the local government in terms of revenue, it might be that they get to keep the revenue from luxury boxes or that the city pays for all maintenance. Then he demands get bigger and bigger with ever increasing renovations and expenses. Then they start demanding a new stadium. When the city says no at one point during this whole process the owner then threatens to move the team and if he keeps getting no he does it. Bonus points if they pull Kroenke where they complain about the stadium but make zero effort to work with the city on improving or replacing it.

 

None of this has happened in Jacksonville. There have been stadium improvements for sure but Khan has paid for them equally with the city and the city pays for them with money already allocated to the stadium. Khan is working with the city to improve the stadium and has never used the threat of relocation to make demands. 

 

Voice of reason, is that you? Thank you for rightfully pointing out the obvious. Zero - and I mean zero - empirical evidence exists that points to Shad Khan's desire to move the Jaguars to London. Even if we pretend like the Jaguars don't have an ironclad lease through 2030 (which they do), the conspiracy theories simply don't even make logical sense.

 

Khan is tanking the franchise intentionally to run off the fanbase? How? By winning the NFL draft by consensus every year, aggressively pursuing free agent acquisitions, building a team that should be great on paper, and massively expanding regional marketing efforts?

 

Khan is secretly planning to move the team to London? Again, just vapid, braindead conjecture. If Khan truly intended to move the team to London, he had so much low hanging fruit that he could have exploited in efforts to do so. As the good man said above, the easiest way that Shad Khan could have got a relocation moving would have been to play the stadium obsolescence card.

 

When Khan bought the team, Everbank Field was probably in the bottom third of NFL stadiums. Capacity was too large for the market size. Club levels were underperforming and dated. Amenities were lacking. The home theater experience was winning over the in-person experience. Hell, we didn't even have naming rights in place.

 

Taking our tin foil hats off for a second and putting ourselves in the shoes of the evil owner with the secret relocation plan, what would we do? I would argue nothing, beyond maintaining the status quo. But what did Khan do? He brought in Mark Lamping, the man behind Metlife Stadium, and gave him the keys to the stadium. Instead of letting the stadium decay into obsolescence, Khan and Lamping transformed Everbank Field into one of the great venues in America. They reduced capacity, they turned underperforming sections of Everbank into genuine revenue drivers, they completely upgraded the club area, they built state-of-the-art locker rooms, they sold (and extended) corporate naming rights, and they fought the home theater experience head-on by adding the world's largest video boards to Everbank.

 

The stadium efforts have been so effective that - if you look at NFL franchise valuation numbers - the Jaguars have increased in value to a point only matched by teams who have either built new stadiums, or in the process of building new stadiums.

 

Sure seems like a [BAD WORD REMOVED] way to secretly tank the franchise in Jacksonville and move it to London.

 

You know what else is a bad way to move a franchise to London? Co-finance the construction of a massive new event space and amphitheater built specifically to provide a killer game day experience to Jags fans. And you know what else is a bad way to move a franchise to London? Plan a massive 10-year development on the Shipyards property that will funnel fans into Everbank Field. And when that sounds like it will be delayed by the city, another bad way would be to shift the project east and start making plans to build a massive development on or near Metro Park, with a luxury hotel (for football fans), entertainment and retail space, mooring for the USS Adams, and possibly even a space for your private yacht.

 

Keep in mind, he's funneling 100+ million and counting into these projects, and we're talking about a guy who is so tight with spending that he goes after a BAKERY when he doesn't think he's ROIing on the project.

 

Simply put, if Khan is secretly planning to move the Jaguars to London, he is literally doing the absolute worst job IMAGINABLE in his efforts.

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