MARK LAMPING: -- definitive documents to review. The first step is analysis by the legal office. The next step is presenting that analysis to the owners stadium and finance committee, which happens in September, mid September. Assuming it gets through that process, it will be brought up to the full vote in October.
I think it's pretty apparent that what teams will be looking for, what the league will be looking for, market comps, what have other small markets done, to solve stadium issues.
They'll also look within the state in which you're operating, what it looks like with other NFL teams, if there are. In this case, what's happened in Miami, what's happened in Tampa. The league will have a full understanding that the state of Florida does not participate in funding, and the city's contribution, doing it on their own.
One of the positive ways from our way to look at that is it's the single largest individual city contribution to an NFL stadium, without being backed by a tax. Those are all a lot of positives.
Q. Mike, does the league have any input of what you guys are going to do in 2027 in terms of where you play? How soon do you anticipate making that decision?
MARK LAMPING: Yes, not only does the league have input, if any NFL team is going to enter into a lease, even for a temporary building, that requires 75% approval of NFL owners, as well.
We haven't spent a lot of time on the due diligence of the two options. We narrowed it down to Camping World and Florida Field. The only reason we didn't do that is it's a waste of energy at this point. We don't have to make a decision right away.
We did have two fact-finding trips that were made up of Jaguars' business people, football operations people and representatives from the National Football League, who visited both Camping World Stadium and Florida Field Stadium in the last 75 days.
Q. Mark, you indicated last night NFL has some questions. Can you go into maybe some of the details, where their questions are in terms of what you have to answer between now and October?
MARK LAMPING: I think individual questions like that should come from the league first.
SHAD KHAN: Let's be honest. We've have a very myopic viewpoint. Mark, obviously the mayor, city council, let's get it done where it works for the city, works for us.
Obviously the league wants to know what's going on. It's like we want to take a moment to celebrate, take a breath, then start worrying about those things.
There's a lot of noise. I think you can imagine. That shouldn't distract us. I mean, we could go through all the permutations, all the combinations. Why? Let's do a downward Yoga pose (smiling).
Q. You bought the team, it was Orlando, it was L.A., it was London, St. Louis. How fulfilling and rewarding is it to finally put that to rest, the doubts?
SHAD KHAN: For me, that's been most of my life. If I would have kind of listened, Hey, you're 16, you know no one, you got no money, where you going, what are you going to do?
Q. You could be a sportswriter.
SHAD KHAN: Exactly. Probably selling cigarettes on a street corner in Pakistan, one cigarette at a time.
It's really part of my, frankly, nature, makeup historically. I don't get any joy of proving people wrong. It was their opinion. They can reflect and move on, okay?
Actions always speak louder than words. From day one, it's been judge us by our actions. I get no particular joy out of proving people wrong.
Maybe on the football side we do (smiling). Nothing would give me more joy here moving forward. We're sitting in a state-of-the-art facility right here. We're going to have a state-of-the-art stadium. I mean, there's absolutely no fricking reason we shouldn't be competitive every game we go out. We expect to win.
It's really been kind of a joy with Trevor, Josh Allen. We drafted them. They love the city. I think these are players who are just woven in the fabric of Jacksonville. They can tell you that. You're going to say, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they really want to be here. I mean, we're counting on those players providing the leadership and representing the city, help us move forward.
Definitely for the Debbie Downers, last night was not a good night (smiling).
Q. Mike, what was the final moments when you came together, it was done? Can you describe that, where you were? Paint a little picture.
MIKE WEINSTEIN: It was an everyday occurrence. It got to the point where we were seeing each other and talking to each other a couple times a day every day.
Ironically, Mark and I probably came to agreement six weeks ago. It's taken all this time for all of the lawyers to get through all the writing of it.
Right from the beginning when we hired our outside counsel, they already had outside counsel, we knew that getting to the terms of the deal was one thing, but getting it in writing was very different. You get locked into certain words, certain interpretations.
As the mayor knows better than anyone, we were really pushing to get the terms that the city and the Jaguars agreed to on paper so we could move it to council.
Right from the beginning, Mark and I had some topics that we not fought over, but went back and forth over. It was always within parameters. I think we both knew from the beginning that we were going to get there and it was going to be something the NFL would accept, the mayor would accept, the community would accept. We just worked through step by step within those parameters.
But it's been quite a while that Mark and I were settled on the terms of the deal.
Q. Mayor and Shad, obviously football is at the forefront for this project. How important were non-football events for you, making another facility stand out?
DONNA DEEGAN: I think it's an important piece simply because it's an important piece for the community. Obviously the Jaguars were front and center of this agreement, and why we needed this state-of-the-art facility.
It's a great thing to be able to share with the community. It's part of a thriving, growing community they can attract top talent, concerts, other events that bring people into your city. Brings in tourism, makes people feel better about the quality of the entertainment. Young people want to come.
So it was important.
MARK LAMPING: Absolutely. I think we look at the stadium, yes, the (indiscernible) so to speak for the city.
DONNA DEEGAN: I want to say that I, unlike Shad, like proving people wrong. I'd like to say I'm very petty in this process. Saved every article, every no way they're ever going to get this done. Saved 'em all. I'm relishing that, relishing that today (smiling).
Q. Mark, can you quantify how many times y'all met? Where and how were y'all meeting? On phone? In person? Describe how you would characterize those meetings. Were they all confrontational? Were they cordial?
MARK LAMPING: We met most frequently in my office in the stadium. I think it's because we had more snacks at the stadium (smiling).
I think it's fair to say that early on Shad had a general outline of where he wanted the lay of the land. I think wherever there were issues, generally got solved between the two of us. Mostly face-to-face meetings. We talked on the phone all the time.
MIKE WEINSTEIN: Those of you that understand the movie with Colombo. He would describe me as Colombo because every time he thought we had a deal, I would come back and say, I want one more thing, I want one more thing. Eventually he let me know that's the way he was basically interpreting me (smiling).
Q. On the architecture, I know you're from Chicago, people tell me the stadium design looks like the Bean. Was that an inspiration at all?
SHAD KHAN: Yeah, of course. I mean, at least I was looking for shapes that are organic, that are unique, that inspire you, and would be timeless, wouldn't be dated.
That Millennium Park, when that was done, the sculpture, there were a lot of stuff that inspired a lot of things. It had one of the first art video boards that did a number of things. So, yeah, art is a great way of getting inspired, so...
Q. Mr. Kahn, how important was it for you to invest $150 million? Why was that something important to you?
SHAD KHAN: I mean, I'm a big believer that the power of football should really move communities. When someone asked me what was my biggest accomplishment in football, I told them getting the HRO passed. We don't talk about that at all. To me, that was really significant.
So this community involvement, I think everyone should benefit. I mean, we're sitting in an area that frankly I've seen deteriorate over the 12 years I've been here, okay? The glacial pace of how some of these things have really not been addressed, this is a great chance with us, with the mayor, with the city council to make a difference.
The workforce development, I think there are people here who need good jobs, construction, some of those life (indiscernible) skills, rather than importing. It's a logical one.
Winning football is maybe a mission for a football team. I think making lives better is really the ultimate goal of any cultural activity like football.
Q. It's mentioned about the team being more financially competitive and sustainable. How specifically will this stadium renovation allow the Jaguars to be more financially competitive with its NFL peers?
MARK LAMPING: The most important metrics, that's become even more important today in the NFL economy, is the amount of revenue you generate locally. We've seen it with recent contracts that the Jaguars have done with Josh Allen, Trevor Lawrence. Money varies by contract. Signing bonuses vary by contract. When the player is going to receive that money varies by contract.
The teams that have the greatest amount of local revenue generally have the capacity to be more creative in terms of those.
One of the things that has happened here in Jacksonville, gave Shad the confidence to commit, is Jacksonville is really growing. We're still a small NFL market, but we're growing in the right demographics. We've had little problems selling our premium ticket offers. What we haven't had is really good premium ticket offers.
One of the key economic drivers of the stadium is that the percentage of premium seats will go from about 12,000 seats up to 20,000. We still need to sell those and still have in excess of 42,000 on general admission.
You also have a chance to reset certain deals, but also (indiscernible) rights, as the mayor indicated. While the new stadium is not necessarily going to change the population of Jacksonville overnight, the design of the stadium will bring more events to the stadium, and therefore that should have a positive impact.
We're certainly expecting and we need to have our local revenue grow significantly because there are services that come along with Shad's investment to the stadium.
SHAD KHAN: I think also local revenue. All revenue is going into the salary cap, okay? We're not growing ours. The other teams are, other markets are. Salary cap is going up, and we don't have the ability to do that. So local revenue comes in very, very important to be able to compete on salary cap, to be able to do that.
There's another element. Like 40% of the ticket sales and what have you are shared with the other 31 clubs, okay? I don't have to tell you that the other owners are looking at how are the economics going to improve for them. That is a big part of that also, for the team to be competitive so we can be up to cap all the time and contribute our fair share.
I mean, we are getting a lot of money from the league, okay? To say, Hey, we haven't earned it, we haven't grown, I think that's a real legitimate concern and viewpoint. I'm very aware of that. That you're getting 1/32nd of it but you haven't grown the pie, that's really why it was important for us to be in London where we did something for the league. We want to do that in the future.
We are doing our part to grow the pie because obviously we're going to be expecting 1/32nd. I mean, the NFL is unlike any other sports league. It's total partnership. How we fit in that ecosystem, what we contribute, what we get, we have a huge amount of self-awareness of that. If we don't do that, we're not a good partner.
Q. Shad, what do you think this deal means for the future of downtown development? Do you think it will help bring Jacksonville to the next level?
SHAD KHAN: I think absolutely, yes. When you have a venue like that, I think it's also a vote of confidence not only by us, by the city. We're investing. The whole north bank of the river is changing, the cranes you see, Four Seasons complex, but other things coming.
The train is moving. We want other investors, developers, whatever, jumping on it, then you get the momentum to be where we need to be, where the city needs to be.
MARK LAMPING: To add to that, there's been a lot of talk about the Community Benefits Agreement. The downtown parks, which are part of it, which was approved last night, was critically important. We've said this before. We are at a hundred million by ourselves. The city came to us and said would you go to 150 if we went to 150. Obviously talked to Shad about that. Shad was inquiring as to where was the city money going. We shared with him the downtown parks are finally going to get complete, that is going to help development downtown, it's going to help support what's happening across the street right now.
Made the decision a lot easier from Shad to go from 100 to 150 because he was seeing tangible evidence, without any criticism, we haven't seen a lot over the last 12 years, tangible evidence that the city was going to invest in the city downtown that's necessary to support development.
Q. Is there any scenario y'all can see if the Jaguars made it to the Playoffs as a home team, won more games, that y'all would not be able to play games in this stadium because you've got to get moving with the construction to be able to have it ready for the 2028 season?
MARK LAMPING: No, there's no scenario because we're actually under the terms of our existing lease for the 2026 season, that requires all pre-season, post-season games are played here in Jacksonville.
Q. For the 2027 season where you're going to be playing away from the Jacksonville market, people who Jacksonville will be able to watch the games or see on the over-air broadcast the way they do now? Is there anything that might be changing with the subscriptions, they can still watch the game here for free?
SHAD KHAN: I think it's a fundamental part of the NFL media strategy way before my time. I think that's what's made the league strong. When you have big-market teams like Chicago, New York, et cetera, give up money to the smaller teams.
Free on-air home games is a fundamental right, so...
THE MODERATOR: Let's it end right there. Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports