Jaguars open stadium to 15K Pokemon Go fans

10:21 PM ET

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — When the Jacksonville Jaguars decided to have a Pokemon Go event at EverBank Field on Monday night, they set a modest goal of having 10,000 people trying to catch characters throughout the stadium.

They blew past that number long before the two-hour window closed.

The team estimates that more 15,000 people attended, which is well above the 9,651 that registered on the team’s website and has the team saying it created the largest Poke adventure in the United States.

“We actually knew it would be big but we didn’t know how big it was going to get to,” said Steve Ziff, the Jaguars’ vice president of marketing and digital media. “It’s pretty amazing.”

Two of those 15,000-plus people were Bryan and Kari Hall. Bryan Hall, an Army veteran, said he’s obsessive about arriving at events early, which is why he and his wife arrived at 2:30 p.m. ET — three-and-a-half hours before the event began.

Fans line up outside EverBank Field to participate in the Pokemon Go event on Monday night. Michael DiRocco/ESPN.com

Naturally, they were the first two people in line, which at one point was so long it snaked to edge of Lot J and back and then wound through several other parking lots and curled around the baseball stadium on the other side of the sports complex.

“I’ve been playing Pokemon since it came out,” Bryan Hall, 30, said. “That was one of my first games my parents bought and I still to this day own so many Pokemon games. I still play them.

“The chance to get a little badge from [the Jaguars for being one of the first 1,000 people in line], it kind of felt like it was kind of awesome, the …

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