CLEVELAND, Ohio – If Jimmy and Dee Haslam actually decide to build a domed stadium for the Browns in suburban Brook Park, it could provide a boost to Cleveland’s status as a year-round concert destination.
Or would it?
The question of whether superstars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen or U2 would make Greater Cleveland – and the Browns dome – a more regular stop on their stadium tours isn’t that cut and dried.
With apologies to the ghosts of “Field of Dreams,” even if the Haslams build it, the stars may not come.
“On the concert side, I don’t think [a dome] will impact music events,” says Cindy Barber, owner of the Beachland Ballroom & Tavern in Cleveland, who has decades of experience booking shows. “They won’t be a big factor. It might bring one more big show through a year. I’m not sure there are enough big-type shows with a production effort to do them, but I could be wrong. That might be a question for Taylor Swift!”
Tom Chema, former executive director of the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex who oversaw the development of the downtown complex that hosts Progressive Field and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, agrees.
“The fact of the matter is there are very few acts who play stadiums anymore,” said Chema. “That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. There’s Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift.”
“We are not missing concerts in the area,” says Chema. “Yes, there are other big events you might lure in, but there are not a lot of them and if you get one — like a Super Bowl or Men’s Final Four — it’s going to be every 15-20 years. And who knows what’s going to happen with BCS, which might continue at neutral sites.”
So, what will really happen with concerts and other big-time entertainment in Greater Cleveland if the Haslams do build a Browns dome in the suburbs?
In cities that have domed stadiums, what does the concert situation look like? How does it differ from Cleveland? Do musicians abandon basketball and hockey arenas for the greater capacities of the dome stadium? How often? And if they do, what might a domed football stadium in the suburbs mean for Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, for which taxpayers just provided huge subsidies?
These and many other questions have bubbled up with news of the Haslams considering a new dome.
While experts don’t necessarily agree on a dome or even where it is supposed to go, nearly all agree that it’s never a domed stadium alone that drives answers to those questions — nor the decisions behind where those big-ticket entertainment and sporting events land.
There are complex demographics and financial decisions to be made, infrastructure and lodging around those sites to consider. Competition from surrounding markets comes into play, as do population demographics, public transit, expendable incomes, existing venues itineraries and amenities and with hundreds of other factors.
Bottom line: a business doesn’t run on feelings. It runs on hard data.
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Reach for the (mega)stars
For the purposes of this analysis, let’s start with the dessert: The artists who can currently fill the stadiums of North America.
The list of marquee stadium-sized names is longer than one might expect, but it does have a hard stop. Here, in no particular order, are the acts with stadium potential:
Taylor Swift, Beyoncé (with or without hubby Jay-Z), Metallica, AC/DC, the Rolling Stones, Kenny Chesney, U2, Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, Paul McCartney, Coldplay, P!nk, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Morgan Wallen, Ed Sheeran, George Strait, Elton John, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, Dead & Company, The Weeknd, Drake, Luke Combs, Depeche Mode, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Some of these names are likely to be absent from the list if/when a Cleveland-area dome is finally built. Because, well, mortality.
But here’s an interesting fact, Cleveland. In the last decade, 22 of the 28 mentioned artists have performed in Cleveland. (The Rolling Stones are performing at Browns Stadium on June 15.) So, we haven’t missed them and they haven’t skipped us.
They just haven’t visited as often — or played to as large an audience — when they do. They’ve also charged more for tickets to compensate for smaller audiences. So that kind of blows the whole “we don’t get big names here” hyperbole out of the water.
There are some divergences among industry analysts around how viable stadium-scale concerts will be in the future and what kind of long-term or deep impact they would have on a market like Cleveland if a domed venue was available for them.
“There are more acts that can play stadiums than ever before, but they want to play during the summer, outdoors,” said Bob Lefsetz, music industry analyst and critic in an email interview this week.
The entertainment business attorney, former head of Sanctuary Music’s American division and consultant to major record labels was very matter of fact when asked if a dome would make a difference for Cleveland in how megatours are routed.
“Nothing significant,” he said.
Once you get out of that stadium stratum, there are a whole host of artists who can play the American arena circuit. We won’t endeavor that longer list but mention it to note that while a lot of the mega bands of their eras still do arenas, they can’t all fill stadiums—at least not without teaming up for a blockbuster bill in the summertime anyway.
Consider Def Leppard with Mötley Crüe / Poison / Joan Jett, which played Browns Stadium last year in Cleveland, and Journey and Heart / Cheap Trick, scheduled to perform July 30 this year at Progressive Field. Even Billy Joel has teamed up with Stevie Nicks, Rod Stewart and Sting to fortify his recent stadium date sales. The Joel/Stewart double bill will be at Browns Stadium on Sept. 13.
To hear concert industry veteran Denny Young tell it, we still have a great shot of getting larger events – dome or no dome. But a dome would open up Cleveland to hosting a very exclusive — and very limited — strata of mega events, such as the Super Bowl, NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four and the College Football Playoffs.
Young, the co-founder/president of the Elevation Group, has long experience in the concert business and created the LaureLive and Wonderstruck concert festivals locally. He says operators of a Cleveland-area dome won’t be able to rely on the mega events to survive, but will need to get creative with packages and bookings.
“With a venue — any venue — you either book things that are offered to you or you create things that you think would do well,” said Young. “But if you don’t have one, you often don’t have a shot at all.”
Upsides and downsides of a dome
What are the upsides and downsides of having a domed stadium in Cleveland (or a nearby suburb)?
On the upside, the increased capacity and enhanced amenities might attract those aforementioned larger/major events, leading to a diversification of entertainment options. That could draw visitors from a wider geographical area for “destination events” and create economic development and ancillary business opportunities for the whole region.
“[Without a dome] we have no shot at a Super Bowl, we have no shot at NCAA Final Four Men’s. Those are the first things that come to mind that require a 68,000-plus indoor venue,” Young said.
“Those events happening [in Cleveland] depend on how aggressive the operator of the potential domed stadium is. My instinct tells me that they would be pretty aggressive and I mean that in a positive way.”
“I think that getting Cleveland in the mix at all is an accomplishment,” Young added. “Right now, we can’t do a Men’s Final Four. Consider the amount of attention and impact that it would bring to Cleveland. Now, let me be clear: I don’t know at the end of the day what taxpayer monies would go into building [a dome] or how many dollars we get out of having one in the next 10 years.
“Does that pay for what the taxpayers put in?” Young said. “I don’t know [about] any of that. But having one of those big events opens the door for more. Let’s say you do get one Super Bowl or one Final Four Men’s, I think that’s amazing. I also think that before you start counting how many you can get, you’ve got to get one and you’ve got to nail it.”
The downsides for a dome in the suburbs?
The experts say competition for events will require an aggressive stance from whoever is responsible for the venue/booking and that could draw events away from existing large venues such as Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, Blossom Music Center, even Progressive Field.
If enough events shift from Cleveland to the suburbs, that could ultimately impact businesses and communities that rely on event-related foot traffic, like the restaurants and bars in the Gateway District and The Flats, near Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and Progressive Field in downtown Cleveland.
And operating a domed stadium comes with considerable maintenance and operating costs, which may strain government budgets or require additional taxpayer support—especially if revenue from special events does not meet projections or expectations.
The impact on existing venues like Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse or Blossom would be greater if the dome can be configured for smaller, arena type shows with a capacity of less than 60,000 seats. That could also be true if the dome development includes separate, smaller performance spaces around it.
“You can make arguments that not everyone can do 60,000 seats,” Young said. “But if you do 28,000 seats, 30,000 seats, 40,000… it can be profitable.”
Deep impact or no?
So, are we vastly overstating the impact a dome stadium might have on a Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and other existing venues?
Possibly. Experts say Rocket might lose a handful of events to a dome over the course of a decade. But the argument could be made that they already lose just as many (or more) events due to being unavailable with 41 NBA Cavaliers and 36 AHL Monsters home games, playoffs and perennial family events like Disney on Ice.
The dome would essentially be available outside of the eight NFL Browns home games and playoffs. But then it’s a question of how many of one-off entertainment events we could/should expect at said dome.
The answer might come from our Detroit neighbors, the closest and most similar city and situation.
Detroit opened Ford Field in 2002 and hosted an NFL Super Bowl less than four years later. Ford Field was the site of the 2009 NCAA Final Four.
Open-air Cleveland Browns Stadium was completed three years earlier has not held either, for obvious weather reasons.
Outside of the 2023 season, which had two nights of Taylor Swift, two nights of Metallica and two nights of Morgan Wallen and more, Ford Field has averaged around 2.5 mega-concert events a year—slightly more than Cleveland Browns Stadium has had.
In the last 10 years without a dome, the Cleveland stadium has hosted Machine Gun Kelly/Avril Lavigne, the Def Leppard/ Mötley Crue Stadium Tour with Poison and Joan Jett, Jay-Z & Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, U2 w/ OneRepublic, Luke Bryan w/ Thomas Rhett and One Direction. That’s under one show a year on average.
The Professional Bull Riders (PBR) brought the “Built Ford Tough Series” tour to Ford Field in March 2012. Prior to that, the only metro Detroit venue they’ve visited is the Palace of Auburn Hills (2001, 2006 and 2007). The United States Hot Rod Association (USHRA) holds multiple “Monster Jam” Monster Truck events at Ford; AMA Supercross Championships have been held there 2006 – 2008 and 2014 – 2017.
These are events that might transition from a Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse to a new dome if the opportunity existed. But Browns Stadium has hosted World Cup-level soccer, college hockey and college football.
Which could all be expanded upon, argued Young.
There are also opportunities for high school, college and university athletic uses (football, basketball, even hockey) to consider as well. Young said that demographics, market size, recent market history and the expense of doing a large-scale show or event absolutely matter. The caveat?
“At the end of the day, if [Foo Fighters’] Dave Grohl, who’s from Youngstown says, ‘I wanna play Cleveland, I want my grandmother to come to the show,’ you’d better believe they’re playing Cleveland.”
From Young’s perspective, Cleveland does seem to be hyper-fixated on what events it doesn’t get—so much so, that “we seem to forget what we do get” when we get it. Especially when other cities don’t.
“That seems to come up in a lot of interviews over the years,” Young said.
“Depeche Mode came to Cleveland in the past year. They didn’t play everywhere. That was a really good get for Cleveland. The Cure was in Cleveland [within] the last year,” Young said. “They didn’t tour everywhere, either. That was also really good get. Sure, Ed Sheeran didn’t come to Cleveland, Taylor Swift didn’t come to Cleveland this time. So that’s where focus is [in interviews]—who didn’t come.”
Let’s do the numbers
Let’s look at Detroit and Cleveland from a demographics perspective.
Both major Midwest cities have diverse populations. We are slightly smaller than Detroit (around 380,000 compared to their 670,000) and while both cities have significant BIPOC populations, Detroit’s is larger. Detroit also skews slightly younger (median age in Cleveland is around 36; Detroit 34) while median incomes appear to be similar.
Both cities have experienced population declines in recent decades, younger residents leaving for opportunities in other cities or regions and similar economic challenges—including the decline of industry, which has impacted discretionary income levels for residents.
The number of cities with a population of 75,000+ or more within reasonable drive (90 minutes) of Cleveland? There are five: Akron, Canton, Youngstown, Toledo and Erie (Pennsylvania). That’s part of your potential audience. Within a 60-minute radius of Cleveland, Ohio, there are several colleges and universities—with an estimated 60,000 students or more. That’s also part of your potential audience.
Seemingly robust demographic drivers in favor of our city so far.
Now let’s look at the Detroit area. Number of cities with a population of 75,000+ or more within reasonable (90 minute) drive of Detroit? Six: Ann Arbor, Lansing, Flint, Fort Wayne (Indiana), Windsor and London (Ontario). The number of college and university students within an hour’s drive of Detroit is double Cleveland’s—with University of Michigan-Ann Arbor alone sporting over 46,000 students.
Seven other higher education institutions drive that number up into six figures.
Similar numbers (except for city center populace) can be pointed to in competing cities Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati and even Indianapolis. But only one of those cities has a dome (Indianapolis) and they are likely getting a lion’s share of events because of demographics and not solely because of a conditioned stadium.
This explains, at least to some degree, the Detroit-Columbus/Cincinnati-Pittsburgh corridor that large-scale entertainment tour itineraries seem to chart (and Clevelanders complain about).
There’s also an unwritten understanding about Cleveland’s concertgoers that mirrors the hearty minor-league hockey following we have in the Cleveland area: we have about 8,000-10,000 diehard music fans who will drive to any one of these other stadium markets to see a big-ticket concert with next to no thought about it. Why?
Our city’s “Rock and Roll Capital of the World” history, pedigree, nostalgia and FOMO (fear of missing out).
It’s unclear how much of that sort of thing might be happening in reverse, though U2 ostensibly sold-out Cleveland Browns Stadium on a Saturday night a few years ago. Ponder this:
Was it because of U2? The fact they were playing their seminal album “The Joshua Tree” in full? Was it because folks from far and wide could spend the weekend in Cleveland? Would the show have sold as well if held on a Tuesday? Did sales suddenly pick up the week before the show, because the weather forecast looked great?
Food for thought. And if we’re thinking about all this, believe that all the big-money players involved are, too.
The “knock-on” effect
One thing that stadium mega-ticket entertainment might do is whittle away at Clevelanders’ discretionary income.
“In theory, [a dome] might make Cleveland more attractive, but there’s a knock-on effect and dichotomy and reality of economics when it comes to smaller, club-level entertainment tickets,” said Sean Watterson, owner of The Happy Dog.
“The overall trend with big shows is that they take up more of peoples’ recreation and entertainment budgets, which means less spent in the local clubs. And if you’re far outside the city, the dollars follow.”
Watterson, along with the Beachland Ballroom’s Cindy Barber, was responsible for the recent Cleveland Music Census. He pointed to The Sphere in Las Vegas as the direction large venues might start leaning, with advanced technological capabilities steering business decisions on a more macro level.
“We might see more events, more alternative sports and the Convention Center might have some opinions about things that could be held in there—where they’d need a really big conditioned or heated space,” said Barber.
The biggest “special events” of all: The Super Bowl and NCAA Men’s Basketball
In the last 25 years, only four Super Bowls have taken place above the Mason-Dixon line: 2006 Detroit, 2012 Indianapolis, 2014 MetLife Stadium (East Rutherford, New Jersey, outdoors) and 2018 Minneapolis.
That total jumps to six if you scroll back to 1980: 1982 Pontiac Silverdome (now defunct/demolished); 1992 Minneapolis (also defunct/demolished).
Of the 54 Super Bowls, 20 have been played in domes. Since 2000, however, the majority of Super Bowls have been played indoors.
With Ford Field, the $500 million stadium broke ground mid-November 1999, three years after Wayne County voters approved a funding referendum that paid 51 percent of the building cost. The construction then took 32 months to complete. It opened in 2002 and had a Super Bowl in 2006.
None in the 18 years since.
What does that say about the likelihood of a Super Bowl at a domed stadium in Cleveland before, say 2030? Or more after that? Having a dome means that the odds for hosting a Super Bowl are never zero—which is certainly the case at present—but again, it’s not domes themselves driving hosting factors, either.
Florida and California have combined to host 12 Super Bowls, with Louisiana and Arizona at three a piece; Georgia and Texas at two each and Las Vegas with one. Translation: destination locations with robust infrastructure are equally (or more) important than domed stadiums for bringing the NFL in.
Men’s NCAA Basketball has been a little different and more frequent.
By 2027, NCAA men’s tournament play will have been hosted at Ford Field three times. Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis has hosted at least as many and are scheduled for more.
How events would be in the cards after our new domed stadium opens? We’re probably looking at maximum of 20-25 days of total potential events in a banner year (mirroring Ford’s 2023), in a given 365-day calendar. Otherwise, it’s going to be less. Other domed venues’ event calendars bear that out.
“It’s true, but with the Big Ten, there could be opportunities. A retractable roof offers opportunities. Temperature and climate-controlled events offer opportunities—monster trucks, motocross, all kinds of things you could do indoors regardless of the weather,” Young said.
“At the end of the day, it will all come back to how aggressive the operator of the stadium going to be,” he added, citing his own Elevation Group being approached about indoor music festivals and the like.
“We get inquiries. Milwaukee’s baseball stadium has a retractable roof. Minnesota’s football stadium is an indoor stadium,” Young said, adding that “owners of these kinds of venues are always on the lookout for innovative content to bring to their venues.”
Just the same, no one can predict what will happen, including what kind of venue will emerge, Young said. But as with any business owner, the eye is always on the return on investment.
“I think whatever the end result is—a new stadium in Brook Park or a renovated or new stadium downtown—the Haslams will be very aggressive to bring events here.”
One more voice of experience
Tom Chema agrees with Young, that it all comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. But because of Chema’s history with Gateway, he comes at it from an entirely unique view altogether.
“How much revenue will those few events—which might not even happen until 2030 or later—generate against the expense of the venue itself, capital and operations? Domed stadiums are hugely expensive to build, to operate, to maintain,” he said.
“Most of the time, no one is in them and the electric load that is carried to operate them—especially if it’s a retractable dome—is crazy.”
Chema believes that a dome might hurt Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, but not necessarily in a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” kind of way.
“Anytime you have competing venues, the winners are the promoters,” he said. “They’re sharks and really good at what they do. It isn’t that you will miss the event; you’ll get it. They’ll just take advantage of the competition, which is harmful.”
A move to Brook Park, Chema said, would likely mirror a slow buildup of a sports complex/campus that other successful cities like Dallas (Arlington), Phoenix (Glendale), Boston (Foxboro), Atlanta and others have endeavored. But for every one of those success stories, he cautions there’s also a Richfield Coliseum.
In essence, we’ve seen this movie before. Or at least most of the plot.
“It took those other locations upwards of 20 years to build,” said Chema, noting that in those same 20 years, the buildup expected around The Coliseum never came, which led to a move back downtown.
Richfield also had parking and ingress/egress with transportation as being a factor, Chema said.
“There’s nothing like being in a city to disperse people quickly,” he added. “When you commit to a game in some of these other modern places, there are maybe a couple highway exits to shoot for and that’s it. No four directions out, like Gateway.
“At these other places, you can be stuck in traffic for hours and that’s your day,” he said.
“It’s about infrastructure. If you have a concert downtown at the arena or the stadium, there are hotels, watering holes, tourist spots, public transit and other things people can take advantage of,” he said.
“To my knowledge, [suburbs] don’t have an option that can rival what downtown has to offer. At least not yet. You could build that up over time, I suppose. But is that a good idea? I guess that remains to be seen.”