Only 30% of Fans at Browns Home Games Live in Cuyahoga County, Data Shows

The vast majority of ticket holders to Browns home games in the 2022-2023 season, from September to January, live outside of Cuyahoga County, recent data shows.

An analysis of every game at the formerly-called FirstEnergy Stadium, from September 1 to January 15th, by Placer.ai, determined that only 30.9 percent of attendees hailed from inside county lines. Moreover, only 15.5 percent of those fans live in Cleveland.

The fan breakdown isn't isolated to Browns culture. During negotiations for the Q Deal, Cavs officials released data that showed similar numbers: 70 percent of fans live outside of Cuyahoga; 90 percent reside outside of Cleveland.

Neil DeMause, an expert on stadium deals and author of Field of Schemes, told Scene that the 30-70 split is relatively common for U.S. regions with large populations in close-by counties. From his own research, DeMause extrapolated that the New York Jets, New York Giants and the New England Patriots all play in stadiums frequented by fans outside the counties they play in.

And, just like the probable future of Cleveland Browns Stadium, those East Coast fans outside county lines did not pay any tax dollars to build the stadiums they frequent.

For DeMause, the burden placed on Cuyahoga residents, through a sin tax or related levy, could be painted by politicians as the price to pay for a boon to the local economy. The public could see through that, of course, and see it as plea by pro sports owners simply to ramp up inevitable profits on the backend of public subsidies.

But DeMause, as Brad Humphreys, another expert on stadium deals, likes to say: it's unlikely that FirstEnergy Stadium's original build, which has cost the public $240 million in the past 13 years, didn't actually grow Cleveland's economy.

"As in just about every stadium or arena in the U.S. "Sales tax revenue go up," he said. "Per capita income doesn't go up, job numbers don't go up. Nothing happens when you build. It just ends up being mostly the same money, being shuffled around through different places."

The Haslams, the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County discuss how to fund a renovation of the stadium that could cost close to $1 billion. Cleveland council president Blaine Griffing has floated the idea of regional and state financial support for the project given the pricetag, and the benefit to the multi-county area.

“I believe there’s going to have to be a lot of creativity, we’re going to have to have a lot of conversations with our adjoining counties as well as Cuyahoga County council and the county executive," Griffin told WEWS earlier this year. “Everybody, the county and quite frankly the region and the state all need to look at what does this asset mean for our region.”

The Milwaukee Brewers built Miller Park, now American Family Field, in 1995 with the help of a five-county coalition, one of the only successes, DeMause said, in wrangling dollars from a surrounding region. Ironically, in March, a $290 million plan to renovate the field—sold as an "economic engine" by Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers—was killed, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.

Scene had reached out previously to commissioners and council people in Lake, Medina and Summit, in order to gauge the likeliness of participation. Most agreed, under one pretense: Their people would have to see the pros.

"If there was Browns training or employees in Lake County, we're always open to economic development and bringing that in, and we have a lot of Browns fans in Lake County," Commissioner John Plecnik told Scene. "But I would want to see how our county would be included in the benefit going forward if we were going to consider that seriously."

The Cleveland Browns have yet to formally confirm plans for Cleveland Browns Stadium's next phase, which is likely to arrive this year in the form of a company-sponsored feasibility study.

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