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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell attended the Huntington Bank Field groundbreaking in Brook Park on Thursday alongside Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.
He called the new enclosed stadium "Super Bowl quality" and made clear the league's biggest game is a genuine possibility for Cleveland.
Goodell's Super Bowl pitch comes with one specific condition for Cleveland
NFL owners vote on Super Bowl sites years in advance, and they have consistently favored cities where the stadium is anchored by a broader entertainment ecosystem.
"When you build a state-of-the-art facility like this enclosed Huntington Bank Field here in Brook Park, uh, I've said before that the building is Super Bowl quality. There's no doubt about that.
"But what makes a Super Bowl, what makes a draft, what makes any of these major events successful is the surrounding infrastructure: the hotels, the restaurants, the transportation, the things that allow you to handle not only the 70,000, 75,000 people in the stadium, but potentially up to 200,000 people that come into the region for these big events.
"We saw that with the draft back in 2021. It was during COVID, so it didn't have the full impact. But we know what Cleveland can do. We've had those conversations with Jimmy [Haslam] and others, and we're excited about the opportunity to potentially bring the draft back here in the not-too-distant future. So, congratulations on what you're doing. This is a game-changer for this region." Goodell said.
The new Huntington Bank Field is a $3 billion project with a translucent roof, closer seating, and flexible capacity.
The city hosted the 2021 Draft and drew strong reviews for how it was run. Getting the Draft back first would be a meaningful win on its own, and it would also serve as a legitimate trial run for the kind of event management a Super Bowl demands.
A Super Bowl in Cleveland is probably still years away, and the surrounding development has to materialize before any of it is realistic. But Goodell saying it publicly at a groundbreaking means the league is watching.
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