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When I first heard that the Jacksonville Jaguars were thinking about relocating to Orlando for the team’s 2027 season when their stadium is being renovated, I thought: Cool.
The team desperately needs a place to play. We happen to have one. So if the Jags’ billionaire owner wants to rent our stadium for a season, that sounds like a potential win-win.
But then we learned last week that the Jags aren’t asking to rent Camping World Stadium. They want Orange County to pay the team to play there — at least $10 million.
Jacksonville Jaguars could get $10M from Orange County to play in Orlando in ’27
Yes, the Jags’ billionaire owner, Shad Khan, wants taxpayers to pay him to solve his problem.
“Welcome to the special brand of stupid that is municipal sports negotiations.”
Those are the words of Neil deMause, the author of “Field of Schemes,” a book and website that studies and exposes the way pro sports teams and their wealthy owners fleece American taxpayers.
Think about it: In what other world would a business owner waltz into a town and say: I need space to run my business. I’d like you to provide it for me — and pay me for the privilege?
All that said — and it pains me to say this almost as much as it will please Mike Bianchi — this is probably one of the best, bad sports deals Central Florida taxpayers have been offered in a while.
In the past, county leaders have paid as much as $3 million for single football games — like the NFL’s Pro-Bowl. So if you compare $3 million for a single game to $10 million for being guaranteed at least eight, regular-season games, the latter looks like a T.J. Maxx clearance-rack deal.
There’s some legit entertainment value to having an NFL team play its full season here. Also, the money would come from a pot of hotel-tax dollars set aside to fund sporting events. Now, I’d argue that whole funding scheme is flawed in the first place — just a way for local officials to tie up money so that they can patronizingly tell citizens it can’t be used for more pressing, local needs. But that funding scheme is, in fact, already in place. So, by sports-deal standards, this one’s not bad.
Still, what I’d really like is for one bloody leader in one bloody town to tell one of these billionaire owners: Pay for your own darn business ventures, just like other business owners do.
If neither of the Jags’ only real Florida options for 2027 — Orlando or the University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville — offered to pay the ransom money, that would probably do it.
I asked Jags execs why they believed taxpayers in another city should pay to solve the team’s stadium problem and received a non-responsive response. Team spokeswoman Lyndsay Rossman said the team was “monitoring the process in Orlando” and noted that all the NFL team owners would have to approve the deal. It was asking someone what time it is and being given a recipe for gefilte fish.
Team officials don’t answer questions like this because they don’t have to. Most politicians just roll over.
When Florida Citrus Sports CEO Steve Hogan went before Orange County’s hotel-tax committee, members didn’t ask any tough questions. I’ll be curious to see if county commissioners do when they make the final decision in the coming weeks as to whether to offer the Jags this money.
I don’t blame Hogan for making the pitch. This would be a big step up for Orlando, which has historically hosted single-game affairs. It would be a destination event that would last for months and bring Jags fans to town.
“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” Hogan said this week. And he said he considered the offer “conservative” compared to what it could’ve been.
He’s probably right. But it’s all relative. This past weekend, I hosted fundraisers for two local nonprofits, the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida and the Orlando Shakes. Both work hard to improve this community’s quality of life. And their supporters dug deep into their own pockets to help fund those missions.
It says a lot about society’s priorities when worthy nonprofits like that scramble to make ends meet while one of the world’s wealthiest men gets offered $10 million to help his for-profit sports venture be more profitable.
Hogan said the team would pay for stadium staffing costs. And Visit Orlando says each game would generate $20 million in economic spending and “impact” in this community (though economists and researchers have long found sports-impact estimates to be inflated). Visit Orlando also predicted the Jags’ deal would be a serious money-loser from a hotel-tax perspective, returning only 21 cents for every dollar invested. Disney and Universal bring way more people to town every single day of the year than any of these games would.
DeMause from Field of Schemes says local officials seem all too eager to accept teams’ premises that teams do communities a favor by asking them to solve their logistical problems. I tend to agree.
If Orlando ends up getting the Jaguars for a season, swell. But this kind of pay-me-to-do-my-business mindset will continue as long as communities allow it. And it would be refreshing for all of the towns being shook down to say: We’d love to have you. We’ll roll out the red carpet and our special brand of hospitality. But we expect you to pay your own way — the same way virtually every other for-profit endeavor in a free-market economy already does.
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The team desperately needs a place to play. We happen to have one. So if the Jags’ billionaire owner wants to rent our stadium for a season, that sounds like a potential win-win.
But then we learned last week that the Jags aren’t asking to rent Camping World Stadium. They want Orange County to pay the team to play there — at least $10 million.
Jacksonville Jaguars could get $10M from Orange County to play in Orlando in ’27
Yes, the Jags’ billionaire owner, Shad Khan, wants taxpayers to pay him to solve his problem.
“Welcome to the special brand of stupid that is municipal sports negotiations.”
Those are the words of Neil deMause, the author of “Field of Schemes,” a book and website that studies and exposes the way pro sports teams and their wealthy owners fleece American taxpayers.
Think about it: In what other world would a business owner waltz into a town and say: I need space to run my business. I’d like you to provide it for me — and pay me for the privilege?
All that said — and it pains me to say this almost as much as it will please Mike Bianchi — this is probably one of the best, bad sports deals Central Florida taxpayers have been offered in a while.
In the past, county leaders have paid as much as $3 million for single football games — like the NFL’s Pro-Bowl. So if you compare $3 million for a single game to $10 million for being guaranteed at least eight, regular-season games, the latter looks like a T.J. Maxx clearance-rack deal.
There’s some legit entertainment value to having an NFL team play its full season here. Also, the money would come from a pot of hotel-tax dollars set aside to fund sporting events. Now, I’d argue that whole funding scheme is flawed in the first place — just a way for local officials to tie up money so that they can patronizingly tell citizens it can’t be used for more pressing, local needs. But that funding scheme is, in fact, already in place. So, by sports-deal standards, this one’s not bad.
Still, what I’d really like is for one bloody leader in one bloody town to tell one of these billionaire owners: Pay for your own darn business ventures, just like other business owners do.
If neither of the Jags’ only real Florida options for 2027 — Orlando or the University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville — offered to pay the ransom money, that would probably do it.
I asked Jags execs why they believed taxpayers in another city should pay to solve the team’s stadium problem and received a non-responsive response. Team spokeswoman Lyndsay Rossman said the team was “monitoring the process in Orlando” and noted that all the NFL team owners would have to approve the deal. It was asking someone what time it is and being given a recipe for gefilte fish.
Team officials don’t answer questions like this because they don’t have to. Most politicians just roll over.
When Florida Citrus Sports CEO Steve Hogan went before Orange County’s hotel-tax committee, members didn’t ask any tough questions. I’ll be curious to see if county commissioners do when they make the final decision in the coming weeks as to whether to offer the Jags this money.
I don’t blame Hogan for making the pitch. This would be a big step up for Orlando, which has historically hosted single-game affairs. It would be a destination event that would last for months and bring Jags fans to town.
“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” Hogan said this week. And he said he considered the offer “conservative” compared to what it could’ve been.
He’s probably right. But it’s all relative. This past weekend, I hosted fundraisers for two local nonprofits, the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida and the Orlando Shakes. Both work hard to improve this community’s quality of life. And their supporters dug deep into their own pockets to help fund those missions.
It says a lot about society’s priorities when worthy nonprofits like that scramble to make ends meet while one of the world’s wealthiest men gets offered $10 million to help his for-profit sports venture be more profitable.
Hogan said the team would pay for stadium staffing costs. And Visit Orlando says each game would generate $20 million in economic spending and “impact” in this community (though economists and researchers have long found sports-impact estimates to be inflated). Visit Orlando also predicted the Jags’ deal would be a serious money-loser from a hotel-tax perspective, returning only 21 cents for every dollar invested. Disney and Universal bring way more people to town every single day of the year than any of these games would.
DeMause from Field of Schemes says local officials seem all too eager to accept teams’ premises that teams do communities a favor by asking them to solve their logistical problems. I tend to agree.
If Orlando ends up getting the Jaguars for a season, swell. But this kind of pay-me-to-do-my-business mindset will continue as long as communities allow it. And it would be refreshing for all of the towns being shook down to say: We’d love to have you. We’ll roll out the red carpet and our special brand of hospitality. But we expect you to pay your own way — the same way virtually every other for-profit endeavor in a free-market economy already does.
[email protected]
Continue reading...
