Last week, Jaguars owner Shad Khan strongly denied a report that he was looking to buy Tottenham in the English Premier League, which will host NFL games at its new stadium, and move the Jaguars to London.
That denial doesn’t appear to be getting in the way of the Jaguars continuing to be a regular visitor to London. Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union reported that Khan is expected to announce this year that the Jags will extend their agreement to play one game in London each season for another four years and that the team would play its 2016 game against the Packers in the United Kingdom.
On Monday, Packers president Mark Murphy made it sound like the Packers portion of that report wasn’t a done deal.
“The challenge is that our fans travel so well to away games in the United States that teams are very reluctant to give up home games against the Packers,” Murphy said, via ESPN.com. “We would love to [play in London]. In fact, I talked to Shad, and he expressed to me that he would be very reluctant to move a Packers game away from Jacksonville.”
The desire to keep a nearly certain sellout at the team’s home field is a natural one. The same could be said of the NFL’s desire to have one of their marquee franchises contribute to their attempts to grow the game overseas and we’ll find out in a few months which of those desires winds up carrying the day.
