This offseason in Jacksonville, the theme has been culture change. By bringing in Urban Meyer, a legendary college coach giving the NFL a shot for the first time, it went in an aggressive and different direction. Earlier during draft week, owner Shad Khan discussed this.
“You don’t want to have too much hyperbole, but it is transformational,” Khan said. “It gives us the opportunity for sustainable and longterm success. That’s what really eluded us. Three years ago, I thought, ‘Okay, we really turned the corner.’ We were even a Super Bowl darling. We even got off to a 3-1 start. That was September of 2018. And then obviously it’s been a downhill ride. This feels like we have definitely turned the corner.”
Now, with former Clemson quarterback and first-overall pick Trevor Lawrence officially on board, there’s a lot of excitement around the team. According to NFL Network’s Judy Battista, the franchise has seen a rise in season ticket purchases this offseason. With spikes in December, when the team secured the first pick, and again in mid-January when it hired Meyer, Battista reports the team has seen eight times the number of new deposits than it has the last few seasons.
More than 50% of those deposit holders are completely new (they had never purchased a ticket of any kind and didn’t appear in the team’s database), and they are on average 10 years younger than the current season ticket base.
It seems this new regime is not only attracting new fans but also attracting younger fans. That’s certainly a positive trend for one of the NFL’s smaller market teams. Though Jacksonville has sold well relative to its on-field success in the past, there’s never been this level of excitement around the franchise.
The Jaguars have been an afterthought in this league for a long time, but those days appear to have come to an end.