CLEVELAND, Ohio – You remember the old football axiom “three yards and a cloud of dust?” Well, expect a lot more next April at Huntington Bank Field.
For the first time in more than 30 years, the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship will be held in Cleveland when racers from across the world will rev up, soar and grind their way through a course at the stadium. It’s one of 17 stops on the Supercross schedule as part of the Monster Energy SMX World Championship series. A fan fest will be held all morning and into the afternoon before the event kicks off.
Supercross involves motorcyclists racing on manmade dirt tracks with designed hills, with riders twisting to navigate sharp turns, small bumps and larger hills.
Related: Cleveland to host Supercross event in 2026
Racers from 25 countries will compete in 17 rounds staged in NFL and Major League Baseball stadiums.
“It’s truly an international feel,” SMX broadcaster Jason Weigandt said as officials announced the rain-or-shine event Tuesday at the stadium.
One of the racers scheduled to compete is Mantua native Jeremy Hand. Hand, whose main sponsor is Northeast Ohio-based Valley Automotive, attended many Browns games in the stadium.
“I always thought about what it would look like with motorcross here,” he said.
What it would look like has changed as the makeup of the racers shifted over the years.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the sport was primarily California-based. California native Jeremy McGrath, one of the sport’s greatest racers, won the ’95 event in Cleveland. But its global roots spread.
“The sport was in a different place back then,” Weigandt said. “The sport really started to expand.”
David Gilbert of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission said officials anticipate 45,000 fans in the stadium and contributing to an expected $18 million in economic benefits for the region, with 60 percent of attendees expected to come from out of region. Supercross’ fan base can draw from a six-hour radius for events, he said.
“If you look at $18 million, that will be one of the biggest events Cleveland will host next year,” he told cleveland.com. “The (2024) Women’s Final Four ended up being somewhere around 35 (million). This could be half of that in one weekend. It’s a very significant one for us to host. Hopefully, if this goes well, we would end up being on a regular rotation.”
Then there’s people visiting tourist sites, eating at restaurants and going to bars. Those tertiary benefits are “so much what these events are about,” Gilbert said.
What will it take to host Supercross at the stadium? A continued partnership between the sports commission and the Browns along with the most important thing – 500 truckloads of dirt. That’s 26 million pounds.
It will take three days to bring in the dirt and create the track, organizers said.
It will come at a busy time for Cleveland sports. The day of the event, the Guardians host the Baltimore Orioles at Progressive Field. Supercross will be held less than a week before the NFL Draft, which is Thursday to Saturday, April 23-25, in Pittsburgh. And it falls during the first round of the NBA playoffs.
For Gilbert and his team, it’s par for the course.
“It’s our job as a community to show why the event is going to be better here. It continues to show Cleveland is one of the top cities in the country for historic major events,” Gilbert said.
And, he added, “We’re not going to wait 30 years for the next event.”
Tickets are available via ticketmaster.com.