The “NFL Stadium Revolution” is fully in motion now. Everywhere you look, teams are either making massive renovations to their current stadiums or they’re building brand new ones .When you look across the league, those teams who are getting massive renovations to their current stadiums or building new stadiums are those who are getting the major events such as the Super Bowl, NCAA Men’s Final Four, WWE’s “Big 3” (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, and SummerSlam), and other massive events.. 

Since 2010, there have been several new stadiums: 

• MetLife Stadium (New York Giants and Jets) in East Rutherford, NJ 
• Levi’s Stadium (San Francisco 49ers) in Santa Clara, CA 
• U.S. Bank Stadium (Minnesota Vikings) in Minneapolis, MN 
• Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta Falcons) in Atlanta, GA 
• SoFi Stadium (Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers) in Inglewood, CA  
• Allegiant Stadium (Las Vegas Raiders) in Las Vegas, NV 

The Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills are going to be added to this list, as both teams are set to open new stadiums by 2026 and 2027, respectively.  The Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars are also getting massive renovations to their current stadiums.

When you look at the list of stadiums mentioned above, a number of them have already been placed on center stage by hosting the major events mentioned in the first graph. 

When a city is awarded a major event, it brings a ton of tourism and revenue in. For example, in 2019, U.S. Bank Stadium hosted the Men’s Final Four for college basketball. More than 90,000 people traveled to the city of Minneapolis for the event, bringing in $143 million into the local economy, according to Dave Orrick, author of NCAA Final Four: How many people came, and how much did they spend? (And did it beat the Super Bowl  

On Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, the WWE is bringing one of its “Big 3” to Cleveland Browns Stadium, formally known as FirstEnergy Stadium, when SummerSlam goes down. My co-host of Championship Rings, live on YouTube and X every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. EST, Brandon Lewis, brought up a very interesting theory that the Haslams are using SummerSlam as an experiment to see how well the current stadium holds when the WWE Universe descends upon the Dawg Pound. 

If Browns Stadium holds up well with the MASSIVE crowd that is expected for SummerSlam, that could perhaps sway Jimmy and Dee Haslam one way or another between either renovating the current stadium or building a new domed one by Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Brook Park, OH, which is a suburb of Cleveland.    

A lot of teams have their stadiums in the suburbs: 

• The Buffalo Bills play in Orchard Park, NY
• The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, TX
• The Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Chargers play in Inglewood, CA
• The Miami Dolphins play in Miami Gardens, FL
• The New York Giants and New York Jets play in East Rutherford, NJ
• The San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara, CA
• The Washington Commanders play in Landover, MD

As such, it wouldn’t feel out of place for the Browns to move out to the suburbs and build a new stadium. Furthermore, in late April, the Chicago Bears unveiled plans to build a new stadium in downtown Chicago, IL, however, those plans have stalled, so there is still a possibility they could still end up moving to Arlington Heights, which is in the suburbs of Chicago.    

The Bears could very well be in a similar position to the Browns in regards to what a new stadium could mean. Both WWE and AEW have shown that they love coming to the “Windy City”, so if the Bears were to build a new domed stadium, they’d have a better chance of getting a major stadium show. Furthermore, Chicago is a phenomenal sports town, just like Cleveland. The NFL has already brought the draft to “Chi Town” in 2015 and Cleveland hosted the event in 2021.

With so many new stadiums being built, it’s possible that over a third of the league will have a stadium that was built in 2010 or later.