Enjoy the Draft. But Don’t Send the Bill to Taxpayers.

Pittsburgh is having a moment.

The first day of the NFL Draft drew a record 320,000 people, according to the NFL, turning the North Shore and Downtown into a national stage. And good. The city looks great. The crowds are real. The energy is real. Pittsburgh should enjoy that.

But these moments have a way of doing something dangerous to public judgment. They make excitement feel like strategy. They make spectacle feel like economic development. And they make people a little too willing to nod along when someone suggests that taxpayers ought to help fund the next round of stadium upgrades because it is somehow “good for the region.”

It isn’t.

PublicSource reported this week that discussions are already underway about upgrades to Acrisure Stadium and PNC Park as the teams’ leases approach expiration in 2030 and 2031, and that public funding is openly part of the conversation.

I want to be clear: Public subsidies for professional sports facilities are not economic development.

They are not a resilience strategy. They are not a growth strategy. They are not how a region builds long-term strength. They are, at best, a public purchase of something people enjoy. At worst, they are a transfer of public money into private sports infrastructure, dressed up in the language of civic necessity.

I am not anti-sports. That is not the argument. I understand exactly what these teams mean to this region. I understand the civic identity, the pride, the memory, the emotional connection. I understand why people want Pittsburgh to feel like a first-class city.

But emotional value and economic value are not the same thing.

A thing can matter deeply and still not justify taxpayer subsidy. A stadium can be beloved and still be a bad public investment. That distinction is not cold-hearted. It is the whole point of public finance.

And the economics here are not especially mysterious. The mainstream critique of stadium subsidies has been clear for years: the benefits are routinely overstated, much of the spending simply displaces money that would have been spent elsewhere in the local economy, and public dollars used on sports facilities are dollars that cannot be used on more productive investments. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis summarizes that critique directly, and a 2026 article in Economic Development Quarterly argues that it is accurate to describe the academic consensus as generally opposed to public underwriting of professional sports venues.

That is the first problem: the economic-development case is weak.

The second problem is more specific to Pittsburgh, and in some ways even more important.

The public already owns these buildings.

The Sports & Exhibition Authority owns and leases Acrisure Stadium and PNC Park. This is not a case where taxpayers are bystanders being asked to step in for the first time. Taxpayers are already in the deal. The public has already supplied the foundational ownership structure.

And that should change the standard completely.

If a public authority owns a facility and leases it to a private operator, then the lease should be structured on a simple principle: the lessee should be responsible for generating and providing the revenues necessary to maintain that facility over time. Not just the lights and janitorial work. Not just day-to-day operations. I mean the full lifecycle cost: operations, routine maintenance, major repair, capital renewal, and long-term reinvestment.

Regardless of how well their programming performs.

That is what a disciplined public asset strategy looks like. A public asset leased for private gain should pay its own way.

Right now, the structure is more complicated than that. SEA’s audited statements show that the authority’s operating revenues include ticket surcharges and team rent; they also show that while the Pirates and the Steelers-related entity PSSI are obligated to pay expenses tied to maintenance, use, repair, and occupancy, SEA still retains certain obligations for capital repairs under the leases. For PNC Park, the audited statements note $100,000 in annual base rent plus surcharge and revenue-sharing provisions; for Acrisure Stadium, they note surcharge-based revenues and an additional $2.11 million annual rent stream tied to a 2014 lease amendment.

That is exactly the kind of arrangement that should make taxpayers wary.

Because once public ownership becomes permanent public obligation, the line between asset management and subsidy starts to disappear. The public keeps the risk. The tenant keeps the upside. And every few years, officials come back asking for more money as if that were the natural order of things.

It isn’t.

Public ownership should not mean a blank check. It should mean leverage. It should mean discipline. It should mean that the public sets terms that protect the taxpayer, not terms that normalize recurring exposure.

And that leads to the next obvious question: if these facilities are truly as valuable as their defenders say, why are taxpayers the ones expected to close the gap?

If owners believe in the economics, let them invest. If lenders believe in the revenue stream, let them lend. If sponsors believe in the branding value, let them sponsor. If philanthropies believe these are indispensable civic assets, let them write checks.

That is how voluntary commitment works.

What should not happen is this: private actors retain the prestige, the control, the upside, and the revenue potential, while ordinary taxpayers are told to absorb the long-term risk and call it economic development.

A private asset with a private upside should not come with a public invoice.

I would draw one distinction here. If private or philanthropic money wants to support genuinely public features around a venue — riverfront access, public space, transit connections, streetscape improvements, youth sports, neighborhood amenities, that is at least recognizably public in character. But subsidizing the core facility of a professional franchise is something different. That is not government doing what only government can do. That is government taking pressure off private balance sheets.

At a time when public dollars are needed for infrastructure, public safety, housing, parks, mobility, utility systems, and neighborhood commercial strength, that is not a minor choice. It is a statement about priorities.

And that is where this debate should really land.

The question is not whether Pittsburgh should enjoy the Draft. Of course it should.

The question is not whether the Steelers and Pirates matter to the civic life of the region. Of course they do.

The question is whether public officials are willing to tell the truth about what stadium subsidies actually are.

They are not economic development. They do not build the long-term productive capacity of a place. They do not create resilience in the way resilient regions are actually built, through reliable infrastructure, strong neighborhoods, functioning public systems, business formation, housing supply, and competent long-range investment.

A stadium can host a crowd. It cannot substitute for capacity.

So here is the standard I would apply.

If the Sports & Exhibition Authority owns the facilities, then the lease terms should require the private lessee to generate the revenues necessary to cover the facility’s full lifecycle cost. If that cannot be done, then the answer is not to tap taxpayers again. The answer is to restructure the deal, raise more private capital, scale the ambition to financial reality, or admit honestly that the numbers do not work without subsidy.

But let’s stop pretending that subsidy is strategy.

Pittsburgh should enjoy the party this weekend. It should show itself well. It should take pride in the fact that the whole country is looking this way.

Then, when the stage comes down, it should remember something basic:

A city does not become stronger because it throws a great event.

It becomes stronger because it knows the difference between what is exciting and what is worth the public’s money.

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Andrew Flynn

Andrew Flynn writes about public leadership, fiscal stewardship, and the systems communities rely on to function well. He is a commissioner in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, works in public finance, and serves as a volunteer firefighter and EMT. Browse the Writing section for more articles, or visit Meet Andrew to learn more.