Bills’ Highmark Stadium Debut Begins Boom in New NFL Venues

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — An NFL stadium boom begins in earnest Thursday with the opening of the Bills’ new $2.2 billion Highmark Stadium, ushering in a wave of development that promises to alter what’s expected at a venue around the league. 

After 39 months of construction, the open-air facility in the Buffalo Southtowns is hosting its first regular-season game, a Lions-Bills matchup on Amazon that features two top Super Bowl LXI contenders. Highmark Stadium arrived six years after the last two NFL stadiums to open— Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. That gap was the longest for the NFL between new venues in more than 30 years, but that type of stretch won’t be repeated anytime soon.

Instead, Highmark Stadium is the first of at least seven new facilities expected over the next half decade, with potentially more on the way. Among the other NFL stadium projects already underway to varying degrees:

• Titans. The $2.1 billion Nissan Stadium in Nashville is far along in construction, and is set to open with the 2027 season. Even before the building work is done, the stadium has been awarded a Super Bowl, and it will host Super Bowl LXIV in 2030. 
• Browns. After a series of political and legal hurdles, the Browns broke ground on the new $2.6 billion Huntington Bank Field this past spring and will open the domed stadium in Brook Park, Ohio, in 2029. 
• Commanders. The team is returning to the District of Columbia after more than three decades in Maryland, and will open a new $3.8 billion facility at their former RFK Stadium site in 2030. New renderings released this week detailed a seating bowl designed to recreate the famed intimacy of that former venue. 
• Chiefs. Kansas City is moving across the border from Missouri to Kansas in a two-stage plan that will involve a $3 billion stadium and a separate training facility and headquarters, worth more than $1 billion, in the Sunflower State. The new stadium is set to open in 2031. 
• Broncos. Denver has unveiled its plan for new stadium and mixed-use development, with the preferred site located at the city’s Burnham Yard area. Opening there also targeted for 2031. The project cost, though not finalized, has been estimated at $4 billion.
• Bears. Though not yet final, the team is closing on a long-awaited agreement with Indiana officials to build a $5 billion domed stadium and mixed-use development in Hammond. A specific timetable for completion has not been solidified, as a final deal to move there is not done, but Bears executives have said the Hammond proposal is their “sole focus,” all but ending any hope of staying in Illinois.

The list also doesn’t include the Jaguars, who are dramatically renovating EverBank Stadium in its $1.4 billion “Stadium of the Future” project that is set to be done in 2028, or the Panthers and their $1.3 billion upgrade of Bank of America Stadium targeted for completion in 2030.

Several other NFL teams that opened new stadiums in the early 2000s, including the Eagles, are now beginning to assess their long-term stadium futures as well. 

The collective result is a set of NFL stadiums that push far beyond basic seating bowls and traditional amenities, and into next-generation technology and mixed-use developments that lean into the real estate boom sweeping across sports.

“I don’t think we’re building stadiums anymore. I think we’re building experiences and bringing people together,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at a recent ceremony in Charlotte heralding the Panthers’ project. 

Bucking the Trend

The main difference between Highmark Stadium and the other new venues  is that it’s an open-air facility. Modeled in part after European soccer facilities such as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, the Bills’ new home is meant to play up the team’s legendary fan intensity and embrace the harsh Western New York winters. 

Each of the other new NFL stadiums to follow will feature roofs, many of them translucent. That was done in part in the hopes of landing a Super Bowl for their city. 

Buffalo, which isn’t a contender to host a Super Bowl but possibly an NFL Draft, had no intentions of creating an indoor environment, a sentiment widely supported by fan surveys conducted early in the Highmark Stadium development process. An extended canopy, however, does provide cover for much of the 60,108 seating capacity—the smallest in the NFL. 

Initial Issues

Despite the optimism surrounding the new Highmark, the final weeks of preparation before Thursday’s grand opening revealed several surprising operational issues.

The exhibition season opener in August revealed some obstructed-view seats in the upper deck, prompting the Bills to acknowledge they would “address internal and external feedback” in advance of the regular season. Highmark Stadium’s natural grass field has already been replaced as well following a pair of exhibition games and some open practices. That was a particularly unexpected move for such a new venue, but Bills players praised the new surface after their prior complaints.

The Bills, meanwhile, insist they will be ready for Thursday’s showcase.

“For the city of Buffalo, it’s a night that they deserve,” said Bills coach Joe Brady. “It’s going to be an outstanding environment. It’s where we want to be and we want to play under the lights. We want to do all that. So let’s embrace it.”