Cleveland Browns fans were willing to pay a premium price during the offseason just to see Shedeur Sanders take the field, even if it was only for warmups. Ticket prices for the rookie’s starts climbed as high as $324, with get-in prices more than doubling within days. But that excitement disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived when head coach Todd Monken named Deshaun Watson the Week 1 starter over Sanders.

“Browns home ticket prices plummeted down to over half once they announced Shedeur Sanders won’t be starting,” a Shedeur Sanders fan account posted on X, sharing podcaster Dave Grendzynski’s September 6 video on the Browns’ games and ticket prices.

In the video, Grendzynski claimed that the ticket costs had fallen, as he had hypothesized months ago.

Todd Monken finally put an end to the guessing game last month. After months of back and forth, he named Deshaun Watson his starting quarterback for the season, pushing Shedeur Sanders into the backup role. It wasn’t exactly a popular call. Plenty of fans and media voices had been pushing hard. But if the noise bothered Monken, he didn’t show it.

“Absolutely not,” Monken told reporters Tuesday, showing confidence in his decision. “Would I prefer that we were all on the same page? Yeah, but that has nothing to do with my decision, and it can’t ever have anything to do with my decisions. My decision has to be what’s best for the Browns Week One, all the way through the season, and as long as I’m the head coach here.”

Fans, it seems, are showing how they feel with their money instead of their words.

Ticket prices across the board have taken a noticeable dip since the announcement. Grendzynski broke down the numbers, and they tell a pretty clear story.

• The Carolina home opener, once going for $55 to $64, is now sitting at $35.
• The Pittsburgh Thursday night matchup dropped from a range of $88 to $98 all the way down to $70.
• Baltimore tickets from $58 to $73 fell down to just $45, and the Houston game is now a bargain at $19.

Grendzynski pulled these figures from Vivid Seats, the same site he checked three months back, and a quick look at SeatGeek showed the same pattern playing out.

It’s not just tickets either. A new Action Network study looked at over 539,000 ticket listings across the league and found that a family of four heading to Huntington Bank Field can expect to spend around $823.13 total for tickets, food, drinks, and parking. That’s the cheapest game day experience in the entire NFL.

So, the pressure is on Watson to give fans a reason to come back. He is trying to steer Cleveland away from last year’s brutal 5-12 finish, but his own numbers with this team haven’t exactly silenced the doubters: just 19 touchdowns across 19 regular-season appearances heading into the final year of his $230 million deal. He has a 9-10 record as Cleveland’s starter.

The bigger worry is health. Watson hasn’t finished a full regular season since 2022. He even ruptured his right Achilles in 2024, and he missed all of 2025 after re-rupturing it.

Meanwhile, Sanders started eight games in 2025 as a rookie, throwing for 1,400 yards and seven touchdowns, but failed to secure the starting role heading into 2026. Plenty of fans clearly haven’t made peace with that, and add the fact that Watson is the starting quarterback, and things look messy.

Watson’s preseason has been up and down. He looked sharp against the Bears, going 11 of 15 for 126 yards with a 98.2 rating and no turnovers. But the Bills game was rough: just 5 of 12 for 36 yards, an interception, and a 14.6 rating, and he sat out the Patriots finale entirely.

Watson called his final season “a blessing” and “an honor,” saying he works hard daily to “put out the best product I can on the field.”

Now the real question is whether cheaper tickets translate into fuller stands, and whether Watson can give Browns fans something worth showing up for.

Ticket prices dropped last season as well

By November last year, the Browns’ home-game ticket market had taken a sharp dive. Some seats that once commanded far higher prices were later selling for single digits.

For example, on ViaGoGo, tickets in sections 501, 502, 503, 514, 515 and 516 were listed for as little as $5. VividSeats showed a similar picture, with seats in sections 501, 503, 514, 515 and 516 going for just $6.

The Browns’ struggles on the field and mounting losses played a major role in the drop. But for fans, the frustration wasn’t exactly new. Over the last couple of seasons, the team had done little to give its fanbase something to rally around.

One can only hope that this season turns things around.