Jaguars’ Owner Khan And Jacksonville’s New Mayor Will Be Playing The Stadium Game

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(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Shad Khan wants to renovate the present stadium and build a village around it. 

The National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars’ owner Shad Khan has released architectural drawings of a renovated stadium for his business. It will be a stadium-village and the price tag for the venue and surrounding retail, office and residential space along with an entertainment district is in the 10-figures. In 2023 dollars, Khan’s “Stadium of the Future” would cost between $1.75 billion and $2.068 billion. Jacksonville taxpayers would put up between $800 million and $934 million of that total. How that tab will be paid is something that has not been publicly discussed. Khan’s plan is renovating the present stadium which opened in 1995. The stadium has been upgraded a couple of times since the 1995 opening. Khan does not provide Jacksonville Jaguars’ consumers with a full home schedule of games. The team has played an annual game in London since 2013. Jacksonville is a small market and has not seen the growth that was promised when the NFL awarded the city an expansion franchise in 1993. Khan’s business gets about 11% of its local revenue thanks to the annual London game. Khan’s local Jacksonville ticket, television, sponsorship and stadium revenue streams are much smaller than teams in larger markets. Khan is locked into an annual game in the 86,000 seat Wembley Stadium in London through 2024.

Khan will be trying to woo a new partner at the stadium game table. Donna Deegan is Jacksonville’s new mayor and keeping Khan’s team in town is on her top things to do list. There has been some talk that it will take two years for the stadium renovations to be completed and that the football team will need a new home on a temporary basis and the Daytona International Speedway could host Jaguars’ home games. But first, Khan needs public money to start the renovation job.

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