Khan Buys Fulham – What’s Next

News broke last Friday that Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan is now the proud owner of Fulham, an English Premier League club. Not satisfied with a temporary presence in London, Khan decided to establish a permanent foothold in England by owning a team in the one of the most popular sports leagues in the world.

Buying a London-based soccer team has inevitably led some national writers to further perpetuate the falsehood that Khan is looking to eventually relocate the Jaguars permanently to London. In addition to requiring no thought whatsoever, this notion ignores everything Shad Khan has done in Jacksonville and the complete lack of logic involved in buying teams in completely different leagues in two different continents and moving the two teams to the same city.

Nov 8, 2012; Jacksonville FL, USA; Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan prior to the game against the Indianapolis Colts at EverBank Field. Mandatory Credit: Douglas Jones-USA TODAY Sports

Let’s follow the proposed timeline of some of the writers who have intimated Khan’s desire to move to London:

• 2013-2020: Under Shad Khan’s ownership, the Jacksonville Jaguars firmly establish themselves as a viable NFL franchise and the questions about Jacksonville’s ability to support a professional sports team are put to rest. In the meantime, Khan has made strong headway in London and throughout Europe with his involvement in Fulham and the English Premier League.
• 2021: Khan decides to abandon the American market by moving the Jaguars to London. Instead of having a presence in two of the biggest sports markets in the world, Khan now only has a presence in London.

Shad Khan has time and again made it known he wants to have an international presence. His purchase of a Premier League club shows he has more than enough money and clearly isn’t buying franchises to turn a profit. Khan now has the power to influence two major cities in America and in Europe. Moving the Jaguars would be illogical and counterintuitive to Khan’s business savvy thus far in his life.

-Daniel Lago

Yell at me on Twitter @dlago89