Short answers, pulled from the story.
The stadium opened in July 1999, with its first event being a preseason game against the Minnesota Vikings on the 21st of August, 1999. The first regular-season game, played on the evening of the 12th of September, 1999, was a 43-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Through the end of the 2023 season, Huntington Bank Field was the only NFL stadium that had never hosted a postseason game of any kind. The Cleveland Browns have not played a home playoff game at the facility since it opened in 1999.
Haslam Sports Group sold a 20-year naming rights partnership to Huntington Bank, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, announced on the 3rd of September, 2024. The deal replaced the FirstEnergy Stadium name, which was terminated in April 2023 following the company's involvement in the Ohio nuclear bribery scandal. Under the agreement, the Huntington Bank name will follow the team to any future facility they build.
Factory of sadness is a phrase coined by Cleveland comedian Mike Polk in 2011, in a video he recorded outside Huntington Bank Field. In 2021, local television station WKYC broadcast a segment with Polk symbolically closing the factory of sadness, after the Browns defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers at Acrisure Stadium.
Populous designed the stadium, then operating as the Sport Venue Event Division of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum. Indianapolis-based Huber, Hunt and Nichols served as construction manager. The concrete superstructure required more than 6,000 truckloads of material, equivalent to roughly 60,000 cubic yards and weighing approximately 235 million pounds.
The Browns announced plans in October 2024 to build a new indoor stadium in Brook Park, adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, targeting a 2029 opening. The Ohio legislature approved public funding on the 30th of June, 2025, and the team officially broke ground on the 2nd of March, 2026. The Browns' lease at the current stadium expires at the end of the 2028 season.