In North Texas, recent years have marked a departure from the halcyon days of the stadium arms race, which Allen kicked off with its $59.6 million Eagle Stadium in 2012, before other schools followed in building palaces that rival college facilities.
The Dallas area had 28 new high school stadiums open from 2000 to 2019 but only four from 2020 to 2024, according to information The Dallas Morning News requested from school districts to gauge the investment North Texas communities are making in football and how that translates on the field halfway through the 2025 regular season.
D-FW’s newest stadium, Glaspie Field in Arlington, opened last week. But Texas voters have since grown more reluctant to approve school bond packages of any kind, not just athletics, even as districts that have built new stadiums have reaped the benefits on the field. Voters in Prosper and Anna ISDs have shut down proposals to build what would have been the most expensive football facilities in the state.
Only six Dallas-area football stadiums that have opened since 2012 have cost more than $30 million, The News found. That doesn’t include The Star in Frisco, a joint venture between the Cowboys and Frisco ISD that opened in 2016 and cost $255.5 million.
Here’s a map of the stadiums built in D-FW since 2012, with information about when they opened, how much they cost and how much success teams have had in their new homes.
More from this series
— Football may be king in Texas, but is its grip on some North Texas communities weakening?
— The highest-earning football coaches in D-FW are at schools that excel in the classroom
— Salary tracker: See how much North Texas football coaches make and their tenure
— Why the stadium arms race in North Texas has cooled drastically
— Thursday: How much money do D-FW booster clubs spend to help teams succeed?
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.