The Jacksonville Jaguars Stink. That Won't Stop the Party in the Stands
By Joel Stein<time class="byline-text" datetime="2014-10-02T14:55:21-04:00" itemprop="datePublished">October 02, 2014</time>
Photograph by Noah Rabinowitz for Bloomberg Businessweek
It’s 94 degrees on a Thursday afternoon in August, and DJ Kid Nemesis is spinning house music while women in Burning Man-esque butterfly outfits dance on a deck above his booth. Go-go dancers in boots, fishnets, and football jerseys gyrate on stages near a swimming pool, where a bunch of shirtless, tattooed guys pay $160 for a bucketful of Patrón Silver tequila and mixers. Then the music stops, and they all face the end zone, hands over hearts, for the National Anthem. The least popular team in the NFL, the Jacksonville Jaguars, runs onto the field to take on the Atlanta Falcons in a preseason game at EverBank Field. For once, the fans cheer loudly.
“This is like hand-to-hand combat every single day,” says Jaguars team President Mark Lamping, sitting in his tidy office. Two screens display graphs tracking progress in sales. One is illustrated with six faces, five in stages of relative ease, and one—yesterday’s single-season ticket sales—that looks red, sad, and angry. Over the past two years, Lamping has implemented myriad strategies to get butts into those empty chairs. Fans can bring their own snacks. Little kids come free. There’s a food truck alley in the parking lot and an area with bouncy-house slides and a live band. He’s putting in Wi-Fi so people can check their fantasy leagues or post selfies on social media, to be picked up and displayed on the stadium video boards.
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Propped up in the corner of his office are architectural sketches of plans for the 40 empty acres across the street; they include housing, bars, restaurants, and an amphitheater. “We’ve just scratched the surface,” Lamping says. “We want to be the most distinctive franchise in the league.”
Photograph by Noah RabinowitzShad Khan
Lamping, previously chief executive officer of the New Meadowlands Stadium, was hired by the very first nonwhite NFL owner, Shad Khan, a 64-year-old practicing Muslim who bought the Jaguars in 2012. At 16, Khan came from Pakistan to study engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with only $500. He washed dishes to pay his way through school and went on to become a billionaire by starting a company that makes parts for more than two-thirds of the cars and trucks sold in the U.S.
Like any sane businessman, Khan didn’t want the Jaguars. He did, desperately, want to own an NFL team. He was within 24 hours of landing the St. Louis Rams in 2010 when a minority shareholder exercised his right to match Khan’s bid. Two years later, Khan paid $760 million to take the Jaguars off the hands of Wayne Weaver, who founded the shoe company Nine West.
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Khan then persuaded the city, which owns the stadium, to pay for two-thirds of a $63 million renovation for this season. A flamboyant figure with long, wavy hair and a handlebar mustache—somewhere between Salvador Dali and Ron Jeremy—Khan is beloved in Jacksonville. He’s the rare owner of a losing team who still gets a standing ovation from the crowd. His team’s annual revenue is $263 million, according to Forbes data, below the league average of $299 million.
Photograph by Noah Rabinowitz for Bloomberg BusinessweekA selfie in the pool
Lamping and Khan’s newest scheme to attract fans is the pool area I’m sitting in today. They installed it this year, in place of those depressing tarp-covered seats. “Ever since Khan came in, it pumped the party up,” says Carrie Hanson, who was a cheerleader for the Jaguars for four years and won today’s preseason poolside cabana tickets on Facebook. She and four female friends get in the water alongside a 10-year-old girl, whose dad, Alan McElroy, had season tickets for 15 years before giving them up a few years ago. (It turns out the only people who want to get into a pool in front of thousands of people are kids and former cheerleaders.) Cocktail waitresses outsourced from the Clevelander Hotel in South Beach deliver endless supplies of wine, Bud Light, shrimp, sliders, hot dogs, and cupcakes to the poolside clients, whose corporate employers paid $12,500 for blocks of 50 tickets. There are also new seats right on the sidelines ($350), as well as a group of club tables ($375 per ticket), where couples can sit and eat a civilized dinner while watching the game, as if they’re at the Hollywood Bowl. Regular tickets still cost as little as $30, compared with $110 for the cheapest seat at a New York Giants home game.
By Joel Stein<time class="byline-text" datetime="2014-10-02T14:55:21-04:00" itemprop="datePublished">October 02, 2014</time>
It’s 94 degrees on a Thursday afternoon in August, and DJ Kid Nemesis is spinning house music while women in Burning Man-esque butterfly outfits dance on a deck above his booth. Go-go dancers in boots, fishnets, and football jerseys gyrate on stages near a swimming pool, where a bunch of shirtless, tattooed guys pay $160 for a bucketful of Patrón Silver tequila and mixers. Then the music stops, and they all face the end zone, hands over hearts, for the National Anthem. The least popular team in the NFL, the Jacksonville Jaguars, runs onto the field to take on the Atlanta Falcons in a preseason game at EverBank Field. For once, the fans cheer loudly.
“This is like hand-to-hand combat every single day”
Twenty years ago it seemed like a good idea to give Jacksonville, Fla., a college football-loving city, an NFL franchise. But the military town never became a major metropolis worthy of a pro team: Half the residents aren’t even Floridians, so most people are loyal to other franchises. A 2012 ESPN poll showed that only 0.4 percent of NFL fans said the Jaguars were their favorite team, by far the lowest figure in the league. The 76,877-seat EverBank Field, built in 1995 for $134 million to accommodate a packed Gator Bowl, sat half-empty for Jaguar games. The NFL blacked out home games on local TV because they didn’t sell out. The team threw a tarp over almost 10,000 seats. It didn’t help.
“This is like hand-to-hand combat every single day,” says Jaguars team President Mark Lamping, sitting in his tidy office. Two screens display graphs tracking progress in sales. One is illustrated with six faces, five in stages of relative ease, and one—yesterday’s single-season ticket sales—that looks red, sad, and angry. Over the past two years, Lamping has implemented myriad strategies to get butts into those empty chairs. Fans can bring their own snacks. Little kids come free. There’s a food truck alley in the parking lot and an area with bouncy-house slides and a live band. He’s putting in Wi-Fi so people can check their fantasy leagues or post selfies on social media, to be picked up and displayed on the stadium video boards.
Story: Wharton Makes a Claim to the Business School Party Scene
Propped up in the corner of his office are architectural sketches of plans for the 40 empty acres across the street; they include housing, bars, restaurants, and an amphitheater. “We’ve just scratched the surface,” Lamping says. “We want to be the most distinctive franchise in the league.”
Lamping, previously chief executive officer of the New Meadowlands Stadium, was hired by the very first nonwhite NFL owner, Shad Khan, a 64-year-old practicing Muslim who bought the Jaguars in 2012. At 16, Khan came from Pakistan to study engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with only $500. He washed dishes to pay his way through school and went on to become a billionaire by starting a company that makes parts for more than two-thirds of the cars and trucks sold in the U.S.
Like any sane businessman, Khan didn’t want the Jaguars. He did, desperately, want to own an NFL team. He was within 24 hours of landing the St. Louis Rams in 2010 when a minority shareholder exercised his right to match Khan’s bid. Two years later, Khan paid $760 million to take the Jaguars off the hands of Wayne Weaver, who founded the shoe company Nine West.
Story: In Crimea's Local Elections, Pro-Russians Run Strong
Khan then persuaded the city, which owns the stadium, to pay for two-thirds of a $63 million renovation for this season. A flamboyant figure with long, wavy hair and a handlebar mustache—somewhere between Salvador Dali and Ron Jeremy—Khan is beloved in Jacksonville. He’s the rare owner of a losing team who still gets a standing ovation from the crowd. His team’s annual revenue is $263 million, according to Forbes data, below the league average of $299 million.
Lamping and Khan’s newest scheme to attract fans is the pool area I’m sitting in today. They installed it this year, in place of those depressing tarp-covered seats. “Ever since Khan came in, it pumped the party up,” says Carrie Hanson, who was a cheerleader for the Jaguars for four years and won today’s preseason poolside cabana tickets on Facebook. She and four female friends get in the water alongside a 10-year-old girl, whose dad, Alan McElroy, had season tickets for 15 years before giving them up a few years ago. (It turns out the only people who want to get into a pool in front of thousands of people are kids and former cheerleaders.) Cocktail waitresses outsourced from the Clevelander Hotel in South Beach deliver endless supplies of wine, Bud Light, shrimp, sliders, hot dogs, and cupcakes to the poolside clients, whose corporate employers paid $12,500 for blocks of 50 tickets. There are also new seats right on the sidelines ($350), as well as a group of club tables ($375 per ticket), where couples can sit and eat a civilized dinner while watching the game, as if they’re at the Hollywood Bowl. Regular tickets still cost as little as $30, compared with $110 for the cheapest seat at a New York Giants home game.
