(02-10-2020, 12:36 PM)FBT Wrote:

(02-10-2020, 10:03 AM)homebiscuit Wrote: Shade the stadium and get a winning team on the field and all will be well. And by winning team, one that can be expected to at least break .500 instead of the perennial disasters this club fields. Is that too much to ask?

I remember at the darkest moments when Wayne Weaver had Winn Dixie giving away free tickets to games, we couldn't fill the stadium.  They held numerous fan forums around the area, including a big one at the stadium where Weaver was in attendance and was talking to the fans directly about the situation.  You had people saying they'd buy season tickets if they replaced the water fountains in the stadium because the ones that were installed at the time didn't dispence chilled water.  That's how petty the fan base can be in this town.  The same people complaining about the sun being too hot in September, are the ones that wanted chilled water at the water fountains 20 years ago.  Khan could accommodate every request and they still would find an excuse for not buying tickets.  

To be fair, the London games have little to do with fan support, or game attendance.  That's really a relatively small piece of the revenue pie in the grand scheme of things.  It's a visual representation that provides the optics to national media hacks to say the fans don't support the team, but the truth is, it's the overall bottom line for the team.  Not just ticket revenue.  Should Khan eventually move the team to London, he'll discover that it's not quite as profitable to play all of his home games there as it was for one game.  I don't think there's quite as much fan passion for JAGUARS football in London as they seem to think.  Most of the expats over there are fans of pretty much every other team.  There's certainly a Jags fan base over there, but it's nowhere even remotely close to what we have here.  If they're stuck with a team full time, it won't draw as well as the league seems to think.  Especially if it's a team relocating from a US city.

I agree with you. Especially the last few sentences in bold. The Jaguars are really forced into London households over there when it's football season. And roughly every game that I have seen in that stadium is dotted with multiple different colors of various teams in the stands. I don't think it's something they're really ready to out right gamble on just yet. 

That's why they'll keep taking home games away from us and trying them out over there. I just don't think it'll ever amount to them going full tilt and all in with eight across the pond. 

I still think it'll be a logistical nightmare for any team to be holed up across the pond as a home location for the NFL. This isn't going to be like Las Vegas. Where you'll consistently be able to draw in outside interest from time to time because it's Las Vegas. Asking teams to constantly fly across the pond is challenging enough.  

Soccer was and always will be Europe's "football" to them. They can keep trying to fit 15 pounds of [BLEEP] in a 10 pound bag though if they want. It'll bottom out eventually. Just like the NFLE did.

---