The good old “Give us our money or we might leave” card is one of the most frequent used by executives and owners of professional sports teams. The Jacksonville Jaguars are the latest club to threaten the usage of such a card.
Jacksonville’s NFL team has played its home games at EverBank Stadium (formerly TIAA Bank Field) since its inaugural season in 1995. The team isn’t seeking a new stadium, but rather nine figures worth of upgrades on its current venue.
And if taxpayers aren’t willing to pay a large chunk of the upgrades? The team is warning the fans that they just might pack up their bags and move the football club to another location.
Per Ben Fischer of the Sports Business Journal, Jaguars’ team president Mark Lamping stated at Wednesday’s AXS DRIVE conference in St. Louis that the team will move if local taxpayers don’t pay $1 billion to finance the stadium upgrades.
“If there’s a referendum, the ballot question should be: Do you want to keep the NFL in Jacksonville?” Lamping asked.
In 2013, the Jaguars announced plans to undergo $63 million in stadium upgrades. The renovations included two pools and two new giant video boards at each end of the stadium.
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“One thing we can’t do, recognizing that Jacksonville is not going to become a top quartile economy in the NFL, is that we can’t put the team, our fans or even the community in a position where we come up with a stadium solution that doesn’t put us on a path to being able to compete with the average NFL team,” Lamping added, via Fischer.
The reigning AFC South champions are off to a 1-1 start, having dropped last week’s home opener to the Kansas City Chiefs. Jacksonville will try to improve to 2-1 on the year when they host the Houston Texans this Sunday.
