5 NFL teams are preparing to leave their outdoor stadiums for domes.
Outdoor football stadiums are rapidly being phased out in the NFL. Currently, there are five fully fixed-roof stadiums in the league and five retractable-roof stadiums. Blink and you’ll miss that number doubling, though.
On Friday, Ohio lawmakers approved a proposal to help the Cleveland Browns build a new domed stadium at the cost of $600 million in taxpayer money. The Browns are only the most recent team to flirt with a transition from being an open-air team to being a domed football squad.
The Kansas City Chiefs are openly debating whether or not they’ll build a domed stadium in Kansas if Missouri won’t help them with the cost of an Arrowhead Stadium renovation. The Chicago Bears’ Arlington Heights stadium proposal also features a dome. So does the Washington Commanders’ new proposed stadium on the site of where RFK Stadium was.
While the Buffalo Bills are working on building a brand new open-air home next to Highmark Stadium, the Tennessee Titans have already broken ground on a domed stadium that is projected to open in 2027. As far as new stadiums go, it looks like only the Bills are interested in building something without a roof over it.
With the way things are going, the Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field really might be the NFL’s lone outdoor stadium at some point in the future. For perspective, only four NFL stadiums opened before 1975. One of those is Lambeau Field. The others are Soldier Field (Bears), Arrowhead Stadium (Chiefs) and Highmark Stadium (Bills), which all could soon be vacant in a few seasons.
By 2030, there’s a real chance that there might only be three NFL stadiums older than the Jacksonville Jaguars’ EverBank Stadium, which opened back in 1995: Lambeau Field, the Superdome in New Orleans (1975) and Hard Rock Stadium in Miami (1987). Older, outdoor stadiums are going the way of the dodo in this league.