
Jacksonville Municipal Stadium - Jacksonville, FL
N 30° 19.366 W 081° 38.142
17R E 438886 N 3354722
Jacksonville Municipal Stadium is a football stadium located in downtown Jacksonville, Florida, USA, and is the home of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL franchise.
Waymark Code: WM2NWK
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 11/27/2007
Views: 136
The stadium sits on 10 acres of land and originally had a capacity of 73,000. Expansions have brought capacity to 76,877. Municipal Stadium is used primarily as a professional football facility but does host other events including monster truck shows and concerts. It also hosts a number of annual college football games, including "The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" each year between Florida and Georgia, the ACC football championship game, and a post-season bowl game, the Gator Bowl, which currently pits teams from the Big East and Atlantic Coast Conference.
The stadium, formerly known as Alltel Stadium, was built on the foundation of the former Gator Bowl Stadium. Construction started January 3, 1994, and the new stadium opened on August 18, 1995. Total construction time was under 20 months and total cost was $134 million — $60 million of which was provided by the city of Jacksonville. The new stadium retained the west upper deck of the old Gator Bowl, which had been added in 1982.
Municipal Stadium's opening day was also the home debut of the Jaguars during the 1995 NFL season. It was the first time that an expansion NFL team had played its first game in a brand new stadium. In 1997, the stadium changed its name to Alltel Stadium after naming rights were acquired by the telecommunications company Alltel. The name Alltel Stadium stopped being used by the city after January 2007 when the contract expired.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are currently members of the Southern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Jaguars, along with the Carolina Panthers, joined the NFL as expansion teams in 1995.