A new poll in the Sunshine State had some incredibly unexpected results: 47 percent of locals for one of the Florida-based NFL teams won’t care if their franchise ends up having to relocate down the road.
That team would be the Jacksonville Jaguars, who play their home games at EverBank Stadium. This has been Jacksonville’s home venue since their inaugural 1995 season.
According to Timothy Gibbons of the Jacksonville Business Journal (h/t Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk), a poll from the University of North Carolina showed that over 50 percent of Jacksonville residents “prefer the city sell EverBank Stadium and the surrounding land” as opposed to using “city money [to] pay for the stadium to be renovated.”
But here’s the most interesting result of the polls: 47 percent of those surveyed said they opposed the option of the team spending $1 billion in public funds to have EverBank Stadium renovated, even if it meant Jacksonville losing its NFL team to relocation.
The Las Vegas Raiders are the most recent NFL franchise to have relocated, making the move from Oakland three years ago. Prior to that, the two most recent moves saw the city of Los Angeles bring in the Rams from St. Louis and the Chargers from San Diego in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
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Jacksonville is one of the smallest markets in the nation that carries a professional sports team, and attendance has been near the very bottom of the league now. But relocating a team is a lot easier said than done, and this does not appear to be on the table for owner Shad Khan.
If he seriously explores relocating the team down the road? At least Khan knows that almost half of the city’s residents won’t care.
