NFL team the Jacksonville Jaguars have been given approval for a $1.4 billion renovation of their EverBank Stadium home, including a 30-year lease and a non-relocation agreement in a move described as “monumental” by the city’s mayor.
Each of the two parties will contribute $625 million, with the city paying an added $150m over the next two seasons on maintenance and repairs to prepare the stadium for construction which is expected to be completed by 2028.
Jaguars owner Shad Khan will pay for cost over-runs of the renovation and meet 80.4% of game-day expenses. The final step in a process which has taken eight years to bring to fruition will be ratification by at least 24 of the NFL’s 32 owners at the league’s meetings in Atlanta in October.
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NFL teams ‘have been lost by cities’
“The reason we started on it so early is that we studied those cities that had problems with their teams,” Jaguars president Mark Lamping said.
“Unfortunately, there have been cities that have lost their NFL teams and they generally all have the same thing in common.
“It’s a smaller market. The team doesn’t have a lease tying them to the city and they have an unresolved stadium problem. Shad’s commitment from the very beginning was to do everything that we could to ensure that doesn’t happen to Jacksonville.”
Jacksonville Jaguars stadium capacity
The stadium will have a capacity of 63,000 for NFL games and will be expandable to more than 70,000 for special events such as concerts.
The Jaguars will continue to play there with a reduced capacity in 2026 before moving for the 2027 season, either to the University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium or the Camping World Stadium in Orlando.
“This is a historic day for our city,” Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said. “This is what we can do when we all row together and we focus on a goal together. Monumental. I think it’s generational progress.”
Lamping thanked the mayor and city. “We’ve been spending a tremendous amount of time and resources, particularly over the last four years,” he added.
“It was a goal that Shad had and that the community shared to keep the Jaguars here in north-east Florida for generations to come.”
