Short answers, pulled from the story.
Modell cited the city's lack of funding and political will to build a new stadium. His own finances had deteriorated sharply after the Cleveland Indians moved out of Cleveland Stadium in 1994, causing Stadium Corporation's suite revenues to fall. Modell claimed to have lost $21 million between 1993 and 1994.
The NFL deactivated the Browns franchise on the 9th of February 1996 for at least three years, preserving the team's name, colors, history, records, and archives for Cleveland. Modell received a new 31st NFL franchise for Baltimore, which became the Ravens. The reactivated Browns began play in 1999.
A fan contest drawing 33,288 voters chose Ravens, a reference to the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, who spent the latter part of his life in Baltimore and is buried there. The name was selected from a list of three finalists that also included Marauders and Americans.
Al Lerner, a former minority owner under Art Modell, purchased the reactivated Browns franchise for $530 million in 1998. Lerner's son Randy took over after Al's death in 2002, before Randy sold the team to Pilot Flying J CEO Jimmy Haslam in 2012.
The Browns-Ravens compromise has been cited in franchise agreements across Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the NBA, and the NHL. Two near-identical agreements occurred when the San Jose Earthquakes transferred their organization to the Houston Dynamo in 2005-2006, and when the Arizona Coyotes suspended operations in 2024 while their organization transferred to the Utah Mammoth.
Ohio passed the Modell Law in 1996 in response to the Browns' relocation. It prohibits sports teams that benefited from public facilities or financial assistance from moving to another city without giving six months notice and attempting to sell the team to a local ownership group. The law was invoked but ultimately untested when the Columbus Crew faced a proposed move to Austin, Texas.