Sporting JAX

Sporting JAX has already found its rival before it has found a permanent home. Fort Lauderdale United FC and Miami AC round out the state's football map.

The club plays two teams under one badge — the women in the USL Super League, the men a tier below in the USL Championship — and in their debut season, 2025–26, they finished second in the regular table and reached the playoff semi-final. Head coach Stacey Balaam took charge in April 2025, and forward Ashlyn Puerta had scored 12 goals by April 2026, but the name that will stay attached to the club regardless of what comes after is Jade Pennock's: hers was the first goal Sporting JAX ever scored.

It is a rented arrangement, running only through the spring of 2026, while Sporting JAX works toward a stadium of its own — 15,000 seats planned for the St. Johns Town Center area, backed in part by former NFL players John Elway and Blake Bortles, with an opening targeted for 2027 or 2028.

Behind the crest, in sky blue, yellow and orange meant to evoke a Florida sunrise, sits a group of owners with their own athletic pedigree: Tim Tebow and Fred Taylor among them, with Steve Livingstone running the club as chief executive and president. The team took its current name in 2023, working with the First Coast community to settle on Sporting JAX. Before that, in 2020, it was simply an idea — a group of local figures deciding Jacksonville should have a club of this kind at all.