A New Analysis Questions Jacksonville's $775 Million Stadium Deal as the Renovated EverBank Era Begins
Published on game day, the Reason analysis argues the economic-impact study behind the EverBank renovation counts events the team's own owner has said Jacksonville cannot host — a claim the city's $21.7 billion projection now has to answer.
As the Jaguars kicked off against Indianapolis on Sunday in a renovation-shrunk EverBank Stadium — about 42,500 fans in the building, according to the analysis — a new published critique took aim at the public money behind the project. Reason, in an analysis published Sunday morning, notes that Jacksonville taxpayers are committing $775 million to renovate the 31-year-old stadium, in a deal closed by Mayor Donna Deegan and approved by the City Council in June 2024, after talks that began under her predecessor, Lenny Curry, whose administration negotiated a 50-50 cost-sharing memorandum in May 2023.
The argument centers on the numbers used to sell the deal. An August 2023 study by Tourism Economics, commissioned by the Jaguars, projected $21.7 billion in economic impact between 2028 and 2052, and Deegan later touted a $26 billion impact over the 30-year lease. The analysis quotes Neil deMause of Field of Schemes calling studies of this kind public-relations documents meant to provide numbers officials can use, and Kennesaw State economist J.C. Bradbury calling this study, in his word, propaganda — an assessment Reason attributes to both men, reported here as their stated views.
Two specifics carry the critique. The study attributes about $700 million over 25 years to mega-event visitor and operator spending, with examples including the Super Bowl — an event Jaguars owner Shahid Khan said in October 2025 Jacksonville does not yet have the infrastructure to host. And its attendance projection of 848,100 people a year, 62 percent of it from Jaguars home games, leaves roughly 322,000 annual attendees at other events, a figure the analysis argues is nearly accounted for by events the stadium already hosts.
The schedule sharpens the question locally. The team plays six regular-season home games in Jacksonville this season after sending two overseas, and next year the city gets no Jaguars home games at all: the team will play its 2027 home games in Orlando during the renovation, and the Florida-Georgia game — one of the existing events the study counts — is in Atlanta this year and Tampa next. What the $775 million ultimately buys Jacksonville is now a live civic argument, and Sunday's analysis is its newest filing.
