The Jacksonville Jaguars turned a Central London pub into Tealwood on Thursday night, kicking off a run of pub takeover events for fans ahead of their annual home game at Wembley Stadium this Sunday. The team also had another gathering scheduled for Friday night and Saturday afternoon, keeping its London push alive in the days before kickoff.
The timing explains why the question keeps coming back: why do the Jaguars play in London so much? Because London is not just a one-off stop for them. It has become part of the franchise’s identity overseas, and the fans are showing up in ways that make the effort hard to ignore. Last week, the Jaguars were already in town for a previous pub takeover before beating the team at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium 19-17 on Cam Little’s 57-yard field goal as time expired.
The crowd around those events is not an accident built in a single season. The Jaguars first brought their international push to London in 2013, and this is now their 15th game there. Over that time, they have built a U.K. fan club called Union Jax, sent hundreds of students to games through the Reward Rows program, run clinics to build interest in flag football and kept players visible through appearances all year. They also run a junior cheerleading program and have used JagTag, their flag football program for ages 8-18, to keep younger fans involved.
That long runway matters because some of the strongest supporters were there before the annual trip became a habit. Jamie Phillips has been a Jaguars fan for 15 years and was the team’s 2024 nominee for the NFL's International Fan of the Year. He said he wanted to follow the underdog like many Britons do, and called his support for the team “a bit of an obsession.” Phoebe Schecter said the Jaguars have become the kind of team people in the United Kingdom can claim as their own, while Francis Sweeney has attended their London games for the past five years.
That is why the Jaguars keep coming back. They have turned London into more than a venue on the schedule, and the next proof point arrives Sunday at Wembley Stadium, where the team will try again to turn a foreign market into part of its home field.
