CLEVELAND —Where the Browns play their games beyond the 2028 season remains up in the air. But whether it's on the lakefront or in Brook Park , the name of the stadium will be the same.
It'll be known as Huntington Bank Field.
The team and Huntington Bank have reached a 20-year agreement that will include the Columbus-based company's name on the team's lakefront stadium. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"This is with the Cleveland Browns ," Huntington CEO Steve Steinour said in a brief post-announcement news conference. "So wherever the Cleveland Browns play, we are going to be there in a big way. That's either here or a new stadium."
The official announcement, including a video presentation and fireworks, was made in front of employees of both organizations on the stadium's field. Owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, along with general manager Andrew Berry and COO Dave Jenkins, were among the Browns representatives on the dais, while Steinour, senior executive vice president Brant Standridge and Northeast Ohio regional president Sean Richardson were among Huntington's representatives.
The new name will debut Sunday afternoon with the season opener against the Dallas Cowboys . It had reverted back to the original name of Cleveland Browns Stadium in April 2023 after the Browns and Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. ended what had been a 10-year agreement for the stadium naming rights.
"I think we've been very explicit that this is complex," Jimmy Haslam said when asked about the stadium site . "It's complicated. It's going to take some time, and so at the appropriate time we'll address that. That's not today."
The stadium, which opened in 1999 with the team's expansion rebirth, was simply known as Cleveland Browns Stadium until 2013. That's when FirstEnergy Corp. agreed to a 17-year, $107-million deal, which was ended last year by mutual agreement.
Jimmy Haslam said the conversations first started in Columbus during the Major League Soccer All-Star Game in late July. Haslam and his son-in-law, Browns executive vice president JW Johnson, spent three days together around the game talking to Steinour, at which time the subject of a partnership was broached.
"We could tell there was mutual interest and obviously big interest in getting things done before the first game with a national TV audience, the Cowboys, the Browns, Tom Brady's first game (on Fox), et cetera," Haslam said. "And so everything came together. I think the teams worked well together, and I told Steve when I saw our teams working on Saturday and Sunday I knew it was going to happen."
What no one knows for sure is whether the stadium that bears the name Sunday will be the one that bears it in 2029. The Browns' lease with the city of Cleveland expires after the 2028 season.
There are two options the Haslams say they're equally considering. There's a renovation of the current stadium, with the price tag estimated at about $1.2 billion.
However, the option that, on the surface, seems like the one in which they're most interested would be a new domed stadium on a 176-acre parcel of land near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Brook Park. The cost has been estimated at $2.4 billion.
"It was never an issue from our perspective," Steinour said of the stadium uncertainty. "We wanted to put a partnership. This is 20 years, this is like a marriage. I mean, you go into this committed, and we feel so good about Jimmy and Dee and the team here and the values, the shared values, what they do in the community. We felt this was a natural alignment. So it was a very quick decision on our part, including our boards, to make this long-term partnership become an announcement today."
Huntington also has naming rights to Huntington Park in Columbus, the home of the Clippers, the Guardians' Triple-A affiliate. It also acquired the name to the University of Minnesota's football stadium, previously known as TCF Bank Stadium, as part of Huntington's 2020 merger with TCF Bank.
Huntington, as part of the deal, will become the "official and exclusive banking partner" of the Browns. The team and the bank also announced they plan to "launch new and dynamic ways to strengthen communities and neighborhoods across Northeast Ohio."
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Cleveland Browns, Huntington Bank reach 20-year agreement, including stadium naming rights
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