The Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Company built the complex in the 1890s as a sports campus serving both the local rugby league side and Yorkshire cricket. From 2006 the cricket ground has been owned by Yorkshire County Cricket Club, after members voted by 98.37 percent to back a £12 million purchase using a £9 million loan from Leeds City Council. The rugby ground stayed with Leeds CF and A, the parent company of the Rhinos, and the two organisations jointly manage the site. The cricket ground seats 18,350. The rugby ground, with three stands and an open terrace, holds 20,112.

On 21 July 1981, with England following on against Australia in the Third Test and bookmakers offering 500 to 1 against an England win, Ian Botham walked to the crease at Headingley. He scored 149 not out. Bob Willis took 8 for 43 the next day. England won by 18 runs. It remains one of the most improbable victories in Test cricket and the kind of game schoolchildren are still shown on grainy clips four decades later. Headingley has hosted Tests since 1899, and most of the great names have batted on the slope at the Kirkstall Lane End, but Botham's Ashes is the moment the ground exists for. It hosted the Ashes again as recently as 2023.

On the south side of the back-to-back stand, the rugby ground has been home to the Leeds Rhinos rugby league club for 130 years. Eleven League Championships, fourteen Challenge Cups, three World Club Challenges: a trophy cabinet that puts Leeds among the most successful rugby league sides on the planet. In 2017 the ground was effectively rebuilt from both ends at once. The new South Stand, sponsored by the Tetley brewery, opened in 2018, a two-tier structure with an expanded standing terrace for 5,500 and seating for 2,200 above it. The new North Stand, the Emerald Stand, opened in 2019 with 3,800 rugby seats, executive boxes, and 4,200 seats that face the cricket ground on the other side.

Stadium names tell their own story. From 2006 to 2017 it was the Headingley Carnegie Stadium, after the sports faculty at what was then Leeds Metropolitan University. From November 2017 the publisher Emerald Group took the naming rights, and the ground became Emerald Headingley. On 3 November 2021, Emerald walked away with immediate effect after Yorkshire County Cricket Club's response to allegations of racism made by former player Azeem Rafiq was judged insufficient. The Rafiq case was painful, public, and not yet done with English cricket when it broke. Two years later, in December 2023, Leeds Rhinos signed the biggest commercial deal in their 133-year history with AMT Auto, and the rugby side became the AMT Headingley Rugby Stadium. The cricket ground is still searching for the right name to put back on the gable.