No NFL franchise has spent more of its life in London than Jacksonville. When the Philadelphia Eagles line up at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 11 October 2026, the Jaguars will be the designated home side in Britain for the 15th time since 2013.
Nobody else has come close to matching that. Anyone weighing up the Philadelphia Eagles @ Jacksonville Jaguars betting is looking at a fixture that has quietly become part of the British October. How a small-market Florida club ended up owning that slot comes down to timing, money and one very persistent owner.
The deal nobody else would sign
The NFL had been staging regular-season games at Wembley since 2007, but they were one-offs. A team surrendered a home date, took the fee and went home. In August 2012, Shad Khan agreed to something different. His Jaguars would play one home game in London every year from 2013 to 2016, the first multi-year commitment of its kind.
The logic was financial. Jacksonville is among the smallest markets in the NFL and had spent years batting away relocation rumours. A guaranteed London date brought in money the home stadium could not. Khan extended the arrangement through 2020 in October 2015, and in 2023 he described the set-up as “a win-win-win”.
An owner with a London address
Khan did not treat the trip as a road game. On 12 July 2013, three months before the Jaguars’ first Wembley outing, he bought Fulham from Mohamed Al Fayed for a fee reported at £150m to £200m. That gave him a Premier League club, a stadium on the Thames and a standing reason to be in the city.
In April 2018 he went considerably further, offering around £600m for Wembley Stadium itself. He withdrew the bid that October, having concluded he would not win the Football Association council backing he needed. The stadium stayed in the FA’s hands, but the attempt told British fans plenty about where their nearest NFL team’s interests lay.
The football stopped being an apology
Novelty wears off. Winning does not. The Jaguars were hammered in their first two London games, losing 42-10 to the San Francisco 49ers in 2013 and 31-17 to the Dallas Cowboys in 2014. Three straight wins followed, over the Buffalo Bills, Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens. The 44-7 dismantling of Baltimore in September 2017 is still their heaviest win in the city.
In 2023 they became the first NFL team to stage back-to-back home games in London, beating the Atlanta Falcons 23-7 at Wembley and the Bills 25-20 at Tottenham. Their London ledger currently reads seven wins and seven defeats, the Los Angeles Rams having won 35-7 at Wembley in October 2025.
Two Sundays, one team
The double-header is now the template. Jacksonville did it again in 2024 and will do it for a third time this autumn, hosting Philadelphia on 11 October before the Houston Texans visit Wembley on 18 October. That second game will be their 12th at Wembley and their 16th in London overall.
Both kick off at 2:30pm UK time. That is a far friendlier slot than the 6pm and 1am starts of an ordinary NFL Sunday, and it helps explain why the NFL odds for these two weekends attract more interest here than a typical round does.
Britain did not pick the Jaguars. The Jaguars turned up, kept turning up, and everyone else was slow to follow. Jacksonville have now played more London games than any other franchise, and 14 seasons in there is still no sign of the habit breaking.
