Just about all the reportage on the new naming rights deal for the North Shore complex that the Pittsburgh Steelers call home has centered on two things:
First, how the public is wringing its hands over the new name – Acrisure Stadium – and how, despite that name change, many, if not most, still will refer to the football stadium that taxpayers built as its original moniker, the 21-year-old nameplate of Heinz Field.
Second, how no “local” corporate titans stepped up to pay big bucks to attach their name to stadium.
To the first point: Indeed, name changes of “public” facilities are a tough sell. We tend to call things what they first were called, no matter who pays what to change those names in some big marketing gamble.
To the second point: Perhaps no local corporations believed buying naming rights to this edifice to corporate wealthfare was a prudent “investment.” Think hard about that one.
Acrisure, generally described as a Michigan insurance brokerage company (but, more specifically, as being involved in artificial intelligence-based services also involving real estate, cyber services and asset and wealth management), reportedly is looking to “go public” soon, will pay the Steelers somewhere between $10 million and $20 million annually over 15 years, or $150 million to $300 million. (Which, by the way, is lower than other professional football naming deals.) Heinz paid approximately $2.85 million a year over 20 years (plus a one-year extension).
Steelers minority owner Thomas Tull has ties to Acrisure. Company owner Gregg Williams says he’s a lifelong Steelers fan.
Of course, missing in all this “discourse” is this, our third point:
Taxpayers made Acrisure’s “investment,” and Heinz’s before it, possible by paying for the majority of the stadium’s construction costs. Twenty years on, it’s waaaaay past time for the Steelers to begin making those taxpayers whole.
Setting aside a portion of this incoming $150 million to $300 million to do so would be a good start.
Better still, and as we previously have advocated, the Steelers, flush with cash even before this new naming-rights deal, should fully remove itself from the taxpayer teat, take over ownership of the football stadium and all associated costs and be treated like the private business it is.
There clearly was no “need” for the public to pay for this stadium. And it’s even more clear that the newly dubbed Acrisure Stadium no longer should be the taxpayers’ ward.
The brand-new Pennsylvania state government budget includes $30 million more per year – from $70 million to $100 million – for the film tax incentive.
Never mind that, as a 2018 state Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) analysis found, the film tax credit generated a meager “return” of 13.1 cents for every tax credit dollar.
IFO principal revenue analyst Stacey Knavel said at the time that the money could be better spent elsewhere. Think education and infrastructure, among other things.
Just last year, researchers for the American Liberties Project and Mackinac Center for Public Policy exposed film tax credits for the corporate wealthfare and tax dollar waste they are.
“Call it the latest entry in the fantasy genre,” the researchers wrote.
“The hope is that taxpayer subsidies will lure big-budget blockbusters and good-paying jobs, but such blatant corporate welfare has failed virtually everywhere it has been tried. It would be a comedy—if millions of dollars in taxpayer money weren’t on the line.”
Their bottom line: “Nationwide, the evidence is clear: State film incentive programs don’t create permanent jobs that benefit residents.”
As a matter of sound public policy, it is not. Yet Pennsylvania legislators continue to entertain the entreaties of those in La-La-Land and their legions of starry-eyed acolytes.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (www.alleghenyinstitute.org).
