GARRETTSVILLE, Ohio — For Rich Stark, a front-row seat in the Dawg Pound feels like a family heirloom.
His mother bought Cleveland Browns season tickets for his father in 1981, the year Stark was born. The family started out in the bleachers at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
In 1999, when the new lakefront stadium opened, they landed in the first row, near the goalposts – in seats Stark and his sister have kept through many tough seasons.
“I’ve lived on hope for 25 years. And I’ve had tiny little glimpses of it,” said Stark, a 44-year-old machinist who lives in Garrettsville, in Portage County.
“It’s not fun, being a Browns fan,” he said, with a laugh.
But one acronym could spell the end of Stark’s fall Sunday ritual: PSL.
“PSLs in the Dawg Pound? I’m out. 100%,” he said.
Personal seat licenses are a money-raising concept popularized in the 1990s – and, since then, used across the NFL to help fund stadium projects. Fans pay a one-time fee to get the right to pay for something else: Season tickets for a particular seat, year after year.
As the Browns cobble together financing for a $2.4 billion enclosed stadium in Brook Park, PSLs could be a key piece of the puzzle. Money from season ticket holders would help cover the team’s portion of the bill for a project where taxpayers are poised to pay at least $900 million of the tab.
“When PSLs first came out … it was considered a racket. Just a money-grab. But they’re kind of entrenched now. And I think everybody does them,” said Hamp Howell, a semi-retired sports marketing consultant who lives in Northeast Ohio.
You don’t have to look far to see what’s possible.
The Buffalo Bills have raised about $245 million so far from PSL sales for their new, open-air stadium, which is scheduled to open next year.
A report the team filed last month with New York state officials shows the Bills have sold more than 48,000 PSLs, with roughly 6,000 more available. Fans are paying anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000 to lock in their seats.
That doesn’t include the cost of annual season tickets.
“I think Buffalo’s a good example,” Howell said. “And they seem to be doing very well. So that would hold up some hope. But they’ve only got a major league hockey team. They don’t have baseball or basketball, which take a ton of money out of the marketplace.”
'It's outrageous'
The Browns haven’t announced pricing for the Brook Park stadium yet.
But in a lengthy survey sent to certain fans this fall, they offered some hints.
News 5 went through the survey and compiled the potential prices shown for PSLs and season tickets, along with possible costs for suites and other group seating. The survey noted that the figures shown were for research purposes only. They aren’t final numbers.
“I think it’s to measure the outrage,” Stark said of the survey. “You know, how mad do people get? … The pricing is outrageous. It’s outrageous.”
The cost of a single PSL started at $550 for a seat in the corners of the upper bowl. It topped out at $193,650 for a field-level seat, on the home side, at the 50-yard line, with all-inclusive food and top-shelf liquor, priority parking and access to a VVIP Field Club.
The median price for a PSL was $4,475.
“It feels like a money grab,” Stark said. “The whole thing kind of feels like a money grab, to be honest with you.”
A Browns spokesman declined an interview request for this story. But the team says it’s simply getting feedback from fans – and hasn’t made any decisions.
Peter John-Baptiste, Haslam Sports Group’s chief communications officer, said the Browns plan to offer a broad lineup of prices and payment plans in Brook Park. The stadium will have 67,500 seats, with room for 2,500 standing-room-only tickets for Browns games.
“The great thing about this new building that we haven’t had in the past is the variety of products,” John-Baptiste wrote in a prepared statement. “Between standing-room-only options to the new Dawg Pound and even clubs and suites, we really think there will be products to accommodate all our fans.”
In the team’s survey, season tickets carried a median price of $2,500 – ranging from a low of $1,250 to a potential high of $29,000 for general, premium seats and club seats.
For group seating and suites, which would not require PSLs, the median price for a season ticket was $18,000 a seat. The survey showed options ranging from a 4-seat high-top table to a 24-seat suite.
“The answer is always money,” Howell said of the reason teams are using PSLs and offering a growing menu of high-end seating options. “It’s a source of revenue that the team keeps. In the NFL, for example, they split ticket revenues. But … suite revenue, the team keeps. Sponsorship revenue, the team keeps. And PSL revenue, the team keeps. So it’s a big source of financing. A big source of income.”
'Throwing a bone'
The Browns have used PSLs once before – to build the lakefront stadium. Now they are in the unusual position of asking some of the same fans to pay a second, one-time fee.
PSLs typically run with a stadium. When a team moves, the license expires.
“It’s an interesting thing,” Howell said. “They’ll be re-selling PSLs to people who had already bought them, supposedly for forever.”
In the 1990s, Howell was part of Cleveland’s push to bring pro football back to the lakefront after former Browns owner Art Modell moved the original team to Baltimore. At the time, suite sales – and the cash from companies and other buyers willing to commit early – were critical to luring a new owner here.
And PSLs were on the table for the first time, at a price of $250 to $1,500 – equal to about $500 to $3,000 today, when you adjust for inflation.
But the team offered discounts for existing season ticket holders, ranging from 10% to 50%. And there were limits. The Dawg Pound, where Stark’s parents sat, was exempt.
“They were throwing a bone, so to speak,” Howell said. “Because I think if they had put PSLs in the Dawg Pound, that would have really elicited some backdraft.”
Fans protested. But they also paid up, starting in 1997.
The lakefront stadium opened in 1999. The Browns kept selling and re-selling PSLs until 2013, when the team discontinued the program. But some fans still have their PSLs.
Now they’re faced with buying a new seat license, making another commitment.
“I would be hard-pressed to say that I would be doing that, given the product on the field. It’s not like this is one bad season. We’ve been dealing with this for decades,” said Mark Levinson, a longtime season ticket holder with four club seats.
Based on the team’s recent survey, he believes PSLs for comparable seats in Brook Park could cost him about $30,000 each.
At $120,000 up-front, that’s more than the cost of many houses in Cleveland.
“I don’t think this market can justify the prices they’re seeking to get,” Levinson said. “And there’s not enough corporate support in the area.”
In their survey, the Browns suggested fans could pay for PSLs in advance, in interest-free installments leading up to the Brook Park stadium’s anticipated opening in 2029.
The other option? Putting 20% down and making payments over five years or 10 years, once the stadium opens, with 8% interest.
'A tough time selling'
Buffalo’s recent track record with PSL sales bodes well for the Browns, Howell said. There are a lot of similarities between the cities. But there’s a big difference on the field.
“That’s tough. Buffalo’s not comparable there. They’ve performed well. They’ve been to Superbowls. They’ve got a good team now,” said Howell, who had PSLs at the Cleveland stadium for decades but finally let them lapse a few years ago.
If the Browns start winning, fans will pack a new stadium in Brook Park, Howell said. But with the team’s recent record, it’s unclear how much people will be willing to pay.
“It’s gonna be a tough time selling, unless the team really performs better,” he said.
Stark is worried the Browns are going to price out dedicated fans, the people he sits by in the Dawg Pound through frigid temperatures, wind, snow, and so much misery.
“The people who have backed you through thin,” he said. “No thick. Anywhere about it. It’s just been extremely thin for a very long time.”
He doesn’t have a problem with the team’s plan to move to Brook Park, or the idea of a domed stadium at the center of a new sports-and-entertainment district.
But as a husband, a father, a blue-collar guy, he can’t justify paying for a PSL.
“Even if I was just rolling around in money, I couldn’t look at my family and say, hey, I’m gonna spend an absurd amount of money to go to these Browns games,” Stark said.
He won’t give up on his team. But he might have to part with that front-row seat, that family legacy, one he hoped to maintain.
“When I drop off and watch games from my house on Sundays, someone else is gonna fill that seat,” Stark said. “They’re not gonna be the same person. They’re not gonna care as much.”
Michelle Jarboe is the business growth and development reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on X @MJarboe or email her at Michelle.Jarboe@wews.com.
