When Al Lerner brought the Browns franchise back to Cleveland in 1999, he was able to bring the franchise back into a new stadium after the demolition of the crumbling Cleveland Municipal Stadium. When the Browns took the field in 1999, they were playing in the new Cleveland Browns Stadium.
For the first 14 years of the new stadium, the Lerner family decided to not sell the naming rights of the stadium, which was a rare decision for the ownership of a professional sports franchise. However, once Jimmy Haslam bought the team in 2012, selling the naming rights of the stadium was one of the first decisions Haslam made.