Fans react as Cleveland Browns $2.4 billion new stadium proposal compared with other stadium projects worldwide

COLUMBUS, Ohio—If the Cleveland Browns’ proposed $2.4 billion covered stadium in Brook Park is built, it would be one of the most expensive stadiums in modern world history, a cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer analysis has found.

That price, which the Browns want to split evenly between the team’s owners and taxpayers, would be in the same ballpark, so to speak, as other recent NFL stadium projects. But it also helps illustrate the escalating cost of professional sports stadiums, as well as the immense amount of money that the Browns’ owners are both anteing up and asking for from taxpayers.

The most expensive stadium in modern history – both among NFL teams and in the world – is SoFi Stadium in suburban Los Angeles, which has been the home to the L.A. Rams since 2020. The $5.5 billion stadium was paid for entirely by Rams owner Stan Kroenke.

But SoFi Stadium is an outlier among NFL stadiums, both in terms of cost and the absence of public funding for it.

Two other recent NFL stadium projects are closer to what the Browns are proposing: In Las Vegas, where Allegiant Stadium opened in 2020 to house the newly relocated Oakland Raiders, a then-record $750 million in public funds covered about 38% of the stadium’s $2 billion construction cost. The other 62% was paid by the team.

Conversely, in Nashville, 60% of the cost to build a new $2.1 billion stadium for the Tennessee Titans was paid for via state and city bonds. A new $1.54 billion Buffalo Bills stadium is set to open in 2026, with 55% of that cost being covered by $850 million in public subsidies.

The Titans and Bills, with help from the NFL, have agreed to pay $840 million and $690 million for their respective stadium projects.

All these statistics were compiled by three economics professors: J.C. Bradbury of Kennesaw State University, Brad Humphreys of West Virginia University, and Dennis Coates of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. They reflect construction cost subsidies alone and don’t include other public incentives such as tax breaks or paying stadium maintenance expenses.

The Browns haven’t publicly released details about how they calculated the $2.4 billion price tag of a new Brook Park stadium. However, one of the details that team representatives told state lawmakers during closed-door meetings last week was that the new stadium’s field would be 80 feet below ground level, so as not to interfere with planes from nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

In general, the cost of building a new NFL stadium has been escalating in recent years. That’s partly because of higher inflation rates, labor costs, and prices of building materials, but it’s also a reflection of how stadiums themselves have become more opulent, with amenities and attractions for fans far beyond just seats and concession stands, said Michael Leeds, a Temple University professor who specializes in sports economics.

“Nowadays, you’re building kind of a shopping mall built around a stadium,” Leeds said. “There’s so much more going on – you’re installing wifi that people can (use to) order beverages and food without leaving their seats. …It’s remarkable the bells and whistles they have today.”

Bradbury, one of the three economists who compiled the data about stadium costs, said in an interview that it’s no surprise that the price tags for new facilities keep going up, given that few teams want to build a stadium that’s less impressive than the ones built before it.

“When you build new stadiums, they don’t tend to get worse,” Bradbury said.

The Browns’ stadium proposal, he said, comes on the cusp of an anticipated wave of stadium replacements. The last such wave came around 2000, and as leases signed back then start to expire in the coming years, teams will look at the prospect of building a new home.

Bradbury emphasized that, when talking about how to pay for a new stadium, it’s “totally irrelevant” to focus on the percentage of the cost that the team will pay versus what the public will kick in.

“It’s a bargaining tactic by teams and locals who want to give money to teams who say, ‘Oh, we’re under X percent. 50/50? Sounds fair,’” Bradbury said.

He added: “What matters is spending. If you spend a billion dollars of public money on a stadium, that’s a billion dollars the public doesn’t have. That’s the number that could be going to roads, schools, public safety, whatever.”

Most expensive sports stadiums in modern history, in U.S. dollars