LONDON, England — The annual pilgrimage to London for the Jacksonville Jaguars might be coming to a temporary stop in the next couple of years.
The Jaguars are preparing to play their 16th London game, and their second in the last week, when they host the Houston Texans at Wembley Stadium on FOX30 Sunday.
On Saturday morning in London, three local media outlets sat down with Jaguars team president Mark Lamping to discuss the future of London. Currently, the team is not contracted to play a game at Wembley Stadium in 2027, but it will definitely play one game overseas.
“I mean, the only thing we know for certain as we sit here today, we know that we’re going to play one game, a minimum of one game in London next year,” said Lamping. “Well, let me back up. We know we’re going to play one international game next year, okay, because next year we owe the NFL a game.”
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Lamping calls it a resolution game. The NFL will control where that game is played. Under league rules, all teams must give up one home game every four years. The Jaguars borrowed the 2030 resolution game this year because of the Stadium of the Future construction.
The Eagles game last week checked the box for 2030. Next year will be the resolution game in this four-year cycle.
After next season, the Jaguars won’t owe the NFL a resolution game again until 2034.
As for next season, the Jaguars could play as many as three home games overseas according to their agreement with the City of Jacksonville. It doesn’t sound like they will utilize that option.
“I don’t think that that’s a highly likely end result,” said Lamping. “One of the reasons we wanted to have the ability to play three games in 2027 is at the time we negotiated, we didn’t know if we were going to be playing in Gainesville or going to be playing in Orlando.”
The Jaguars and the NFL ended up choosing Orlando as their home away from home in 2027, and there could be as many as eight home games in Central Florida next fall.
“I think the likelihood of three games [overseas] in 2027 is - I think it’s remote,” said Lamping.
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What about 2028? The Jaguars will open the Stadium of the Future that season, and if all goes well, every home game will be in Jacksonville for that football campaign.
“I’m not going to shy away by any stretch of the imagination,” said Lamping. “If there’s a natural year where you probably want to play every home game in Jacksonville, it would be the year you open the new stadium.”
OTHER NOTES FROM MARK LAMPING
*There’s been some question about the playoffs and if the Jaguars would be allowed to play the postseason in a smaller-capacity stadium and if construction would force a possible change in January.
Lamping says the Jags are playing in Jacksonville in any playoff scenario: “No question, they’ll be hosted in Jacksonville, and the schedule was built assuming that you host the AFC Championship game. That’s how the schedule was built. The other way around is if we don’t host the AFC Championship game, we’ve just picked up at least a week. That’s the way to look at it.”
*Is the Stadium of the Future on schedule?
“You know, we learn something that we weren’t necessarily expecting or aware of, but we have a very, very talented construction team. They’ve been able to be nimble and be able to deal with those surprises, and you know we’re on schedule. It was a tough summer weather-wise. All the lightning. I mean, there are four cranes around the stadium and all four of them were hit by lightning this summer. You know, it’s not a safety hazard, but it slows things down for sure.”
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*The Stadium of the Future is scheduled to open in July of 2028 and a Jaguars game will likely be the first event in the new digs, says Lamping: “Ideally, you’d want to have some test events to get the place working. I don’t think that’s going to be the case. I think the first event will be a Jaguars game.”
*The Jaguars have already had conversations to book other events in the Stadium of the Future, including upcoming concert tours and neutral site college football games.
Lamping on the latest discussions: “You know, there’s a couple of very prominent ones that everybody knows about that come up for bid occasionally. Navy-Notre Dame, and, you know, Army-Navy. Those are things that you know we look very closely at. You know we’ve hosted Navy-Notre Dame in the past. Army-Navy would be a natural in Northeast Florida. It’s very complicated because you need to bring in the entirety of the midshipmen and the corps of cadets. You have to fly them. This case, you have to fly them in for the game. But that obviously would be a big statement.”
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