Proposed Brook Park dome personal seat license outrages Browns fans

The team recently sent out a survey to fans, exploring the possibility as a way to raise money off season tickets to pay for the yet-to-be-built venue.

Browns fans react after a fumble was overturned by officials during the second half of an NFL football game against the Green Bay Packers at Huntington Bank Field, Sept. 21, 2025, in Cleveland, Ohio. | Jeff Lange / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Cleveland Browns are planning to move into new Huntington Bank Field by 2029, with official plans to break ground in 2026.

With that, the team has recently started surveying fans on the possibility of handing them part of the tab for the new venue.

As Daryl Ruiter of 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland reported earlier, the team is sending out surveys to fans, asking for their opinions on a Personal Seat License scheme. Personal Seat Licenses, or PSLs, are a way in which teams collect money by forcing the fans to pay for the right to subsequently acquire season tickets. In other words, you pay for the right to pay for seats.

The PSL scheme is common around the league, with TIQAssist stating that around 20 of the league’s 32 teams utilize some form of PSL structure. Cleveland sold PSLs in 1999 when their current home opened, but stopped offering them in 2013 because demand had fallen off.

According to Cleveland.com, those were priced in the range of $250 to $1,500 per seat, with no PSL charges for the 10,000 Dawg Pound seats.

Now, it seems they might become a thing again once the team moves to the new stadium.

According to the survey sent out to fans. The Browns are expected to charge anywhere between $500 to $149,300 per seat, depending on the section, if they decide to go through with this plan.

The location of the proposed $2.4 billion indoor stadium in Brook Park, is approximately 13 to 17 miles away from the current Browns stadium. It’s set to become Ohio’s first enclosed stadium, and will seat around 67,500 fans, with capacity expandable up to 75,000 for select events.

Although the team hasn’t officially announced that PSLs will be implemented for would-be season-ticket holders, this strategy of spreading out the financial hit among die-hard fans has become more and more popular within the NFL, since it was first established by the Carolina Panthers in 1996.

The Bills and Titans, expecting to debut their new stadiums in 2026 and 2027, respectively, are adhering to this model, as well.

At this point, the fan survey looks more like a preview of what’s to come, than just an exploratory exercise. If the organization follows through on PSLs, then the real question becomes how many fans would be willing to hand over such amounts of money when the product on the field is so bad.