Jags sponsor sues team, wants to have name removed from ‘KhlownOut’ game

The Jacksonville Jaguars #KlownOut movement has made national headlines since its startup, and now it’s starting to show the potential to affect Shad Khan’s pocket.

According to the Florida Times-Union, RoofClaim.com is suing the team to have its name removed from the Jags’ upcoming season finale against the Indianapolis Colts partly due to the #KlownOut movement that will be a big part of the game’s storyline. RoofClaim.com, who came to terms on a $600,000-per year sponsorship deal with the Jags back in August, is arguing that the team breached the terms of the agreement.

The deal involved making RoofClaims.com a highly visible, featured sponsor for a game this season (this week’s match-up). However, the company today expressed a desire to avoid “being emphasized as the primary sponsor of a clown game,” according to a complaint received by Jacksonville’s Circuit Court. 

A legal representative of RoofClaim.com (attorney Jeremy Paul) stated that the company feels as though the Jags have “utterly failed to provide the sponsorship benefits outlined in the agreement.” Additionally, the lawsuit’s documentation states that the team broke the deal “by exposing RoofClaim.com’s brand to a toxic marketing environment that will cause irreparable harm.”

Former Jags coach Urban Meyer was a key player in making the deal, and the company had plans to tie the deal to his tenure with the team, but he was fired last month on Dec. 16. That was the day that RoofClaim.com informed the Jags that they wanted to end the partnership, but the Jags insisted that it continue, according to the suit. 

The Florida Times-Union reportedly received an email from a Jags spokesperson stating the organization’s intentions to “protect our interests”:

“We are in receipt of the complaint filed by RoofClaim.  It is baseless and without merit, and contradictory to the very terms RoofClaim negotiated in its sponsorship agreement earlier this year.  We will exhaustively protect our interests in this matter at every turn.”    

The #KhlownOut movement was created in light of a report broken by Ian Rapoport that the Jags would be retaining general manager Trent Baalke, who has established a questionable reputation that could hinder the Jags’ coaching search. As a culmination of the movement, with one home game remaining, the fanbase has decided to show up in Sunday’s game dressed as clowns to hold a mirror to the franchise’s struggles under Khan. They’ve also flooded the team’s official social media pages with clown memes to voice their displeasure.