Jacksonville City Council reviews $1.5 million sports tourism proposal for the River City

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — During tonight’s city council meeting, a bill meant to bring in more sports tourism to the River City was brought to the table. It entails one and a half million dollars going towards ‘Visit Jacksonville.’

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City Council President Ron Salem is sponsoring this bill and says he is hopeful this will bring even bigger sporting events to the city.

While no one came forward during public comment to talk about this matter, some folks outside of the meeting say they are excited for more sporting events to come into town.

“I love the idea,” Jacksonville resident Holly Keefe said. “We’re huge sports fans definitely support the city bringing in additional avenues for us to enjoy sports entertainment in the area.”

Keefe said her son, Colin, is a big fan of basketball.

“Very exciting, because we don’t have a lot of basketball teams at all,” Colin said. “And it would be cool to watch a basketball team instead of having to travel if you live in Jacksonville.”

The NCAA is one of the major sporting events, Salem says he is hoping to bring back to Jacksonville.

“It’s clean tourism,” Salem said. “It’s events that the citizens want to see.”

Last month, Salem proposed to move $1.5 million from the tourist development council to ‘Visit Jacksonville.’ He says the money could be used for fees to apply for events and sending the new board to national meetings for the NCAA.

“We had a Sports Commission like this back 15 years ago, but it was abolished,” Salem said. “We want to restart it, and have a very active effort to bring in college events, from basketball, to football, to volleyball, soccer.”

While the city already has a Chief of Sports and Entertainment, Salem says his role is focused on putting on events already in Jax. But if this new bill is approved, Salem says the new sports authority board will actively recruit new sporting events.

“We’re going to set up bylaws set up a board of directors, seven to nine people,” Salem said. “Some will be appointed by me, some, by the mayor to actively go after these types of events. Alex, [the Chief of Sports and Entertainment], that you’re talking about doesn’t have the time to perform these kinds of tasks.”

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Since this proposal is outside of the government and with Visit Jacksonville, Salem says it will provide a little more flexibility when recruiting sports events.

“Sports tourism is a great economic engine,” Visit Jacksonville President and CEO, Michael Corrigan said.

Corrigan says this will help put the River City on the map as a leader in sports tourism.

“Everyone of those events that come in town, it brings visitors with them, and visitors bring money,” Corrigan said. “And that brings money into our economy. They stay in hotels, they eat in our restaurants, they purchase things in our stores.”

There was no vote in tonight’s city council meeting. Right now, it’s a waiting game for when the legislation goes to a vote. It could be another few months before it moves forward.

Also, the mayor’s office sent an emailed statement to Action News Jax saying they are also in support of this bill:

“Mayor Deegan is fully in support of efforts to bring more high-profile sports games, including the NCAA basketball tournament, to Jacksonville.”

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