Jaguar Fans Are In Deep Debt.
According to an article on Bizjournals.com, the Headline reads: "Jacksonville among the least expensive NFL experiences"
As read in said article by Stuart Korfhage: "A new study from a website that provides sports betting information says the Jacksonville Jaguars are one of the least expensive teams to visit on game day. The Arizona Cardinals topped the list of cheapest NFL experiences, but the Jaguars were No. 2 based on reasonable ticket prices, parking options and concessions."
The ticket prices for a Jags game is about $118.82 per game. The average ticket will set fans back $81.07— the second cheapest average ticket in the NFL, while parking is only $20 for some lots around TIAA Bank Field.
The metrics defined to calculate the "cheapest" teams were ticket prices, parking, a 16-oz beer & the cost of hot dogs in the stadium as determined in Sidelines.io.
I'm here to tell you that is an absolute LIE. For these metrics only tell less than 1/2 of the story from the perspective of pure comsumer prices. Yet, there's no light shed on the perspective of "INVESTMENT" on the part of taxpayers. The issue here is that when it comes to professional sports in America, team owners and leagues have figured out that they can use our love of sports to get taxpayers to fund massively expensive stadiums.
This is an article about the economic catastrophe that is Stadium Subsidies and why it is a catastrophe that is plunging the City Of Jacksonville into further debt and destitution thanks to local Politicians who'd like to give the illusion that they are responsible for Job creation. Everyone who knows me, knows that I'll tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Government in incapable of creating jobs.
The Jacksonville Jaguars drew 531,675 fans to home games in 2022. That’s a lot of economic activity in the surrounding area on gamedays, but spread that out over the other 357 days out of the year, it doesn't look like much. With this in mind, the average daily impact of The Jaguars spread out over the course of the entire year is equivalent to the customer traffic of a single decent-sized convenience store or small grocery store. That’s certainly not worth hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to bring to Jacksonville.
Unfortunately, the stadium isn’t the only place where claims of “economic development” have put taxpayers in debt for decades to help prop up the Jaguars’ profits. Thanks to the City Council’s vote last year, Duval County taxpayers are already on the hook for $60 million for the team’s “football performance center,” a bill that auditors say will cost the city $105 million over the course of the next 30 years. That averages out to $3.5 million per year. That’s more money, than the city’s budgeted share this year of the interlocal agreement that keeps Atlantic Beach, Jacksonville Beach and Neptune Beach safe, healthy and clean for residents and tourists.
Recently, The Jacksonville Jaguars have selected global design firm HOK as their consultant for the project of making major renovations to the TIAA Bank stadium, HOK confirmed to News4JAX. The starting cost of such a renovation will be about $600 and $800 million, but that could change according to Jaguars President, Mark Lamping.
With such an innumerable history of investments going to the teams owner, Shad Khad, namely the Lot J Project, the Shipyards Development, etc. you'd think there'd be a high ROI from these incentives to solidify economic stability. But that's also incorrect.
It's often far too overstated the importance of Job creation in relation to the investments made into professional teams by way of subsidies. For instance, in 2019, the average National Basketball Association team brought in roughly $305 million in revenues. That’s big money, but it’s not a giant growth engine in a local economy. By of comparison, that’s about as much business as five average-sized auto dealers do in a year, combined. Yes, it’s nice for a big city to have that business going on, but it’s not going to make a large-scale difference in the community one way or the other.
There’s also the issue of what kinds of jobs people are being hired to do. Unlike an NBA team, where a few people make millions but most stadium jobs are largely seasonal and part-time (such as the case in Jacksonville Security & Guest Services S.A.F.E. Management where I've personally worked, primarily on weekends) those five auto dealers would create a wide range of full-time professional and blue-collar jobs.
Additionally, sports teams are unusual in that their spending is hugely concentrated in player salaries. That limits the local economic impact, as players generally spend half their season playing road games in other cities and frequently don’t even live in their “home” city during the offseason.
In 2017, the University of Chicago surveyed a collection of distinguished economists from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, UC-Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Northwestern and other respected economics departments. This panel, which included an incredible 7 Nobel Prize winners in economics, was asked if stadium subsidies generate a positive rate of return for taxpayers. The answer was an overwhelming 83 percent of the panel saying NO, subsidies do not generate positive ROI for taxpayers; 11 percent were unsure and just four percent were pro-subsidy as pictured below:
To close this article; I'd like to reiterate the point that not only are we NOT saving the most money when it comes to ticket prices by comparison to other teams, but we're also in serious debt with very little ROI from taxpayer Incentives volunteered by City Hall & the Downtown Investment Authority.
I love my team just as much as the next fan. However, it's time for them to PAY FOR THEIR OWN STADIUM.
