Heinz Field Is No More
This past week the Steelers announced very lame news. They are dropping Heinz as a sponsor name and announcing…Acrisure. A company nobody had ever really heard of. They appear to be insurance. Nobody was happy about this except for a small group of boardroom executives somewhere who made money.
Stadium naming rights are one of the lamer things the recent decades of capitalism has brought to sports. These are almost universally terrible names. Almost every good stadium name is a solid, unbranded official name (Soldier Field, Lambeau Field), or a good nickname (The Superdome). Heinz field was one of the few exceptions. Ford Field would be my other exception. Honestly, FedExField also has a particular flow to it that isn’t too bad, but it is tainted by association with resident piece of shit Dan Snyder.
A lot goes into a good name, but I think the main thing that made Heinz field (and Ford Field) good names is that both companies have an actual cultural identity within the city they are located in. Heinz is a Pittsburgh institution. Ford is basically the company that made Detroit. They have long, deep histories within their respective towns. Acrisure isn’t even a Pittsburgh company. It’s Michigan. Acrisure is a weird word, it sounds like the name of a health yogurt or smoothy drink.
I went to the list of stadiums on Wikipedia during this process and I realized I don’t even know half the actual names of stadiums anymore. The naming rights have switched over in multiple places thanks to expiring contracts and whatnot. I think we should have ourselves a thought exercise. Rename the stadiums. Pick a good local hero, actually local company, or just classic neutral name that suits the city and change it. For example, I live in Portland. The Trail Blazers play at the Moda Center. Except they don’t, it used to be called The Rose Garden, and anyone with good sense still calls it The Rose Garden. The Rose Garden is such a better name for it and fits the city (we are called The Rose City) far better.
Here’s the complete list of names. Look at this crap. We can do better.
Acrisure Stadium – Pittsburgh – Go back to Heinz field, or Three Rivers stadium. Maybe Bridge City Stadium. Pierogi Park.
Allegiant Stadium – Vegas – The Desert Dome. The Hockey Puck.
GEHA fiels at Arrowhead Stadium – Chiefs. Nobody calls it GEHA field. It’s Arrowhead. Arrowhead is a better fucking name.
AT&T Stadium – Dallas – Jerryworld. Just embrace the Jerry dome.
Bank of America Stadium – Carolina – BoA has a history in Charlotte but it’s such a clunky name.
Ceasars Superdome – New Orleans – just call it the fucking Superdome
Empower Field at Mile High – Denver – This, the Superdome, and Arrowhead are all stadiums where the company buying the rights was simultaneously smart enough to not exactly change the name from what people actually like, but also screw themselves over because aint nobody using the brand name part of the stadium name.
FedExField – Washington – rolls off the tongue pretty well, isn’t the worst offender of the brand names. But for something located in our capital, we can do better.
First Energy Stadium – Cleveland – Terrible. Don’t name stadiums after boring company names. Know another reason why Heinz and Ford work? They are people’s names. Nobody is named First Energy. If someone is I feel very bad for that person.
Ford Field – Detroit – The motor city could probably come up with a more neutral car name, but as stated, this one works.
Gillette Stadium – Patriots – The best a stadium can get? No. Although “Middle of the fucking woods stadium” doesn’t roll off the tongue. Pilgrim park?
Hard Rock Stadium – Miami – Just a bleh name, my Miami people, what’s a good fit here? Magic City Stadium?
Highmark Stadium – Buffalo – I didn’t even know they changed it from Ralph Wilson to this generic crap. Niagara Field? Lake Erie Park?
Lambeau Field – Packers – perfect, no notes
Levi’s Stadium – 49ers – Candlestick was one of the best stadium names in sports. We’ve lost it. What about like Prospector Park or Goldrush Field
Lincoln Financial Field – Philadelphia – Philly is such a historic city they have to do better than this. Franklin Field? Liberty Stadium?
Lucas Oil Stadium – Indianapolis – something speed or car related would be nice, or farmish. Or just call it The Barn
Lumen Field – Seattle – snooze. Seattle is all about the maritime stuff, give it name along those lines.
Mercedes Benz Stadium – Atlanta – just call it The Sphincter or Aperture Park.
Metlife – Giants/Jets – boring insurance name, boring stadium. The Meadowlands is a better name
M&T Bank Stadium – Baltimore – stop naming stadiums after banks and companies based around single letters. Old Bay Field? Francis Scott Key Field? Unitas Stadium?
Nissan Stadium – Titans – bleh. Music City Stadium? Sounds better to me.
NRG Stadium – Houston – The oil dome! The Refinery.
Paul Brown Stadium – Cincy – honestly, good. No notes. Good on Mike Brown for not selling out his family name for like, Wells Fargo Field
Raymond James Stadium – Tampa – it’s a name name, from a local company, so it could be worse. However, it’s still a fucking bank and it doesn’t flow very well
SoFi Stadium – LA – another fucking bank. Someone needs to ban banks or anything finance from naming anything. All these banks have no goddamn personality.
Soldier Field – Chicago – honestly probably the best stadium name in the NFL
State Farm Stadium – Arizona – I didn’t even realize the University of Phoenix was a result of naming rights, I thought the Cardinals shared a stadium with a college. Silly me
TIAA Bank Field – Jacksonville – might be the worst of all the bank names, which is saying something. Might be the worst name of all NFL stadiums.
US Bank Stadium – Minneapolis – fucking christ please tell me the locals have a better nickname for this genuinely cool-looking place than this
Please, banks, I am begging you, go spend money on something else. Stop ruining our stadium names.
Heinz has been Kraft Heinz of both Chicago and Pittsburgh since 2015, making the city connection a bit less.
Kraft Heinz Field wasn’t going to sound the same anyway.
Speaking as a Steelers fan in LA, it could be worse. At least it isn’t crypto.com arena.
The only thing wrong with this list is that Lumen Field will forever be called CenturyLink Stadium by me. But that also might just be me who will still call it that. I wished they never changed their name.
Qwest
Am too young to remember the NFL before 2013. Only knew it as the Clink.
While the stick was a great name, Levi’s is a name and has cultural history for the bay area and for as boring as Santa Clara is Levi’s is better than anything related to the team. And definitely not anything tech related please.
You and I know the minute that Levi’s is out, it’s going to be Cisco/Salesforce/some startup/some crypto thing.
US Bank is apparently nicknamed “the Ship” by some people, I don’t know who, but it might derive from my probably favorite design decision in the whole thing, namely that they set up the giant LCD billboard out front to sit on top of a goddamn fully rendered Viking longship as though it was its sail. I cannot appreciate that corniness enough.
Sadly, the problem is that US Bank embedded their fucking name into the roof of the thing like a gigantic billboard, and it can be seen from damn near any angle of the place including at night. The bank branding is inescapable and I hate it. I personally, if given total control, would go all in on the Viking theme for the place and call it Valhalla or Ballhalla, depending on how cheesy I was feeling at that point. Perhaps something slightly more reserved like Tarkenton Field, or just straight up go for calling it New Metropolitan. I agree that damn near anything would be better.
Target really should have bought the rights to it, and should buy the rights to the Xcel Center when that comes up for sale. Then we could have Target Center, Target Field, Target Stadium and Target Arena.
I’ve heard people calling it “The Bank” too, which is definitely better than the official name. Calling it “The Ship” is because the design itself is an abstract ship. I like the design except for the crummy logo slapped on it. Target would be better because you could put multiple logos along the sides like shields on a Viking longship. Damn, now I want to see that.
It’s perfect for the Vikings. The stadium resembles a capsized longboat.
I miss the names of the old days, like Jack Murphy Stadium and Joe Robbie Stadium… the Kingdome, the Hoosierdome, the Silverdome… Three Rivers Stadium, Riverfront Stadium, The Meadowlands… The Metrodome, Veterans Stadium, RFK Stadium. Ah, the good old days.
Gillette stadium kinda works because Gillette headquarters is not that far north (in South Boston) and the company has been in Massachusetts for over 100 years. Plus sometimes people call it The Razor, which… is better?
Put it this way, it’s better than “Foxboro Stadium” (its predecessor) and definitely better than CMGI field (its previous name before the dot-bomb wiped out CMGI). It’ll never be soldier or Lambeau, but it could be worse. What if it were Proctor & Gamble field or P&G Stadium, the owners of Gillette? What if it were Kraft Stadium, making his empire complete? No thank you.
I was going to say the same thing. Gillette is one of the few branded stadium names that actually works since Gillette is a local institution. Can’t really think of anything that works much better. Samuel Adams Stadium? Dunkin’ Stadium? … Okay both sound kind of badass, not gonna lie.
Gillette Stadium also is a real person’s name as the company was founded by King C. Gillette. I’m definitely in the camp of “if you have to name your stadium after a company, those named after actual people sound better than made-up words.”
The old stadium had gone through several names over its lifetime. Foxboro Stadium was its final name, but most of its history before that it was Sullivan Stadium, named for the Sullivan family that owned the team at the time. It also has the dubious honor of being one of the first corporate named stadiums as it was originally known as Shaefer stadium after the beer.
Dunkin’ Stadium already exists, kind of. The indoor basketball/hockey area down in Providence formerly known as the Providence Civic Center has been named the Dunkin Donuts Center for like 20 years now.
Dunkin’ has the rights to the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, where Providence College plays basketball. They call it The Dunk.
I still call it “Foxboro”, not even “Foxboro Stadium”. I don’t mind Gillette, but I’d never use that name in a conversation about the Pats
*insert joke about South Boston not being near Foxboro*
>Plus sometimes people call it The Razor, which… is better?
Definitely better, but I can’t remember anyone outside of radio announcers calling it that.
The biggest tragedy in all of this is the death of the massive ketchup bottles over the jumbotron behind the South Endzone. For all of Heinz Field’s faults, that feature alone made it one of the more fun stadiums in the league. Gonna be a damn shame to see them go and I’m not even a Steelers fan.
I cant imagine Ray Jay without the pirate ship. No ketchup is going to be sad
It might not be over. The ketchup bottles are considered separate from the stadium name, so Heinz might keep those but not maintain the name.
BofA Stadium is nicknamed “The Vault” but this isn’t really used by many people.
Came here to write this as well.
And to mention we also call it BofA. lol
Hard Rock Stadium isn’t great – hell, they’re everywhere, there’s one up the road in Newcastle – but it could be worse *cough*Landshark*cough*SunLife*cough*ProPlayer*cough*.
Magic City Stadium? Crap, no. That’s Orlando. I was fine with Dolphin(s) Stadium, but going as far back as I do… it’ll always be the Joe.
Yeah, the Joe (Robbie) is what I’ve heard everyone call it. I thought SunLife was the best of the corpo names though, at least it has some Miami vibe to it
Florida Man here. Back when I was growing up it was Joe Robbie Stadium. Loved it, but have no idea who Joe Robbie is and doubt anyone under the age of 70 will either. I liked Pro Player Stadium. Even when they went corporate and landed on Sun Life for a few years, I liked that one too, and that suits South Florida.
Hard Rock is a stupid, stupid name. The simplest and easiest name for a stadium in Miami is Vice City Stadium or if you don’t want the “bad” association, maybe Gateway Stadium leaning into the city nickname “Gateway to the Americas”.
Maybe go with Steeler Stadium? It’s nice and alliterative.
As an Eagles fan, I love your suggestion of Franklin Field. I was also thinking Rocky Balboa Stadium (or just Rocky Stadium), but then again it would be a bit silly to name a sports stadium after a fictional movie character.
You could always go with the other Philadelphia Landmark – Cheese Steakadium. X’D
If the Eagles are going with a corporate sponsor name, wouldn’t Duracell or Energizer make more sense as a nod to fan history/lore?
Franklin Field would be great… if it didn’t already exist down the road at UPenn. The eagles even used to play their games there. The Linc is one of the better nicknames for a stadium.
But I’ll throw a suggestion out there, Philadelphia Cream Cheese Coliseum.
Ralph Wilson Stadium had started off as Rich Stadium (named after Rich Dairy products bought the rights back before the stadium opened) and didn’t turn into ‘The Ralph’ until 1998. It remained that until 2016 when the New Era Cap Company (who used to be HQ’d nearby) had bought the rights and it shifted to ‘New Era Field’. Which, honestly, had a pretty cool ring to it.
I’m interested to see what the new stadium will be named. Hopefully something good
Considering the timing of the name change, New Era Field also fits this current iteration of the Bills extremely well.
It reminds me when Riverfront Stadium changed their name to Cinergy Field for the last five years of its life. Cincinnati has some companies that are better known (P&G, Kroger), but they choose a company no one knew about and was gone four years after the stadium imploded. Also, to call it “Cinergy Field” sounds more like a ballfield at a public park, let alone a professional sports stadium. At least the Reds stadium (“Great American Ball Park”) sounds like a decent baseball name.
And before anyone make a Bengals are cheap joke, the Bengals stadium has been around for 24 years and they haven’t sold their stadium’s name.
When you’ve lost the high ground with the Bengals, that’s a cause for concern.
When you’ve lost the moral high ground with the Bengals, that’s a time to look in the mirror and wonder what the hell happened?!
Great American Ball Park is the best name for any stadium in the 4 major sports. I didn’t even know it was sponsored until I started getting letters from my grandfather’s estate on Great American letterhead.
It’s mildly appalling that you forgot ol’ MetLife Stadium on your list. HOW COULD YOU, DAVE?!?! We like to call it NoLife Stadium, because outside of one magical year since its inception, there have been absolutely no signs of life, especially on Sundays. Ahhhh…. WOCKA WOCKA!
I’m hoping some entity, damn near any other entity*, buys the naming rights just so I won’t have to hear those godawful MetLife ads they run specifically for Giants games on the radio. These ads were clearly someone’s idea of brilliant pandering though they have the opposite effect as their idea of a diehard Giants fan sound like an unbearable asshole (and not a fun NY sportsfan type asshole, that I could live with, their idea is basically some middle manager dullard with no interests or personality other than being a Giants fan).
* Since we suffer through their awful ads anyway, it’d actually be hilarious if the the 1-877-KARS4KIDZ scammers won the naming rights.
YES. Those ads are godawful and whoever wrote them should be drug out into the street and shot like Garfield always wanted.
Kars4Kidz is in my head now, THANKS, and it’s going to take some serious drinking to get it out. X(
Also, that would be hilarious, especially if they just steal cars from the parking lot randomly and left little post-it notes saying “You donated your car todaaaay.”
The opening bars of that jingle would make an awesome entrance song for a heel wrestler.
Dave probably pushed it out of his mind.
Seriously, just name it “Meadowlands Stadium”. It’s what everyone calls it anyway.
The best was the red wings old stadium: Joe Louis Arena. Everyone just called it The Joe.
Now it’s “Little Caesars Arena”
Fuck
Magic City would be better suited for Atlanta, given the stadium’s proximity to the famous strip club of the same name.
Highmark Stadium should have a banner hanging somewhere showing Tommy Wiseau tossing a football around.
Levi’s for the 49’ers could be better, but:
1) the company was founded in the area over 120 years ago
2) Levi Strauss originally supplied clothes for miners.
It’s not great, but it does have ties to the area
I totally understand your comment about University of Phoenix stadium. Of course, it’s even funnier once I learned that University of Phoenix is an online college – it sounds like they’ve experimented with some “mini-campuses” now for tax reasons, but basically it was a college that had no actual physical campus, yet had a football stadium (though not for the college’s team, for the pro team. Confused yet?)
Best part of Lincoln Financial Field is, at the introductory conference, one of the people in charge said “Please, make sure you call it by it’s full name – Lincoln Financial Field. Please don’t shorten it to The Linc or anything like that.”
And, of course, everyone went “The Linc? Perfect!”
And then they booed and showered him with batteries.
Maybe it’ll get better with time. I feel like the best corporate sponsorship is the kind that lends itself to a ruthless and intimidating nickname based on it.
“Century Link” was way worse than “Qwest”, but Century Link = C. Link = Clink = “The Clink”! How charming and scary for opposing teams! Don’t want to end up in the Clink! The Chicago White Sox are currently saddled with the irredeemable “Guaranteed Rate Field”, which is paired with a DOWNWARD FACING RED ARROW, everyone’s favorite symbol to associate with success! But before that, this enormous concrete monstrosity on the South Side was “US Cellular” which became “The Cell”!
I’m eagerly awaiting the day when Steelers fans skip right to this and call “Acrisure” something like “The Crusher”.
As a Houston resident and “I was a fan before they were good” hopeful, I can tell you that half this city still calls it “Reliant Stadium”. Will be interested to see if that happens with “the old Heinz Field”
And the other half still calls Williams Tower “Transco Tower”!
My favourite thing about stadium sponsorship deals was that the home of the Nashville Predators, now called Bridgestone Arena, was previously named the “Gaylord Entertainment Center”. Makes me chuckle every time I think about it.
I agree that once a name, particularly a good one, gets inside your brain, it sticks no matter what name changes come along later. The home of the Toronto Blue Jays will always be SkyDome to me, despite the fact that it’s now called Rogers something. I say “something” because Rogers now has naming rights to several venues in Canada – the Vancouver Canucks, the Edmonton Oilers, the aforementioned Blue Jays, possibly others, and I refuse to keep track of which is a centre, which is an arena, etc.
Honestly NRG was better before the company renamed itself. “Reliant Stadium” flows really well and isn’t immediately twigged as a corporate branding effort.
Raiders should change theirs to Roomba stadium to fit the overall look
aperture amphitheater
Cave Johnson Stadium.
Portal Park.
GLaDOS Field.
Hell, whatever gets Valve to give us Portal 3…
amen to that
need me some more cake
I’ll give Raymond James stadium credit because it seems like it gets shortened to Ray Jay, which is an unrelated person name, but it still sounds kinda catchy.
Atlanta used to have the Georgia dome which everyone pretty much loved. Now most people just refer to it as “The Benz” which isn’t too bad all things considered. I tried Megatron’s butthole for awhile but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
The only defense I have found for the name change is that the owner of Acrisure is one of the Steeler’s minority owners. It was announced earlier this year that Heinz wasn’t renewing their naming rights, but everyone expected it to be named after a local company like UPMC or US Steel.
US Steel would have been fine. Everyone in Pittsburgh was dreading the possibility of UPMC buying the rights though. They’ve already ruined enough crap in this city.
UPMC, a Pittsburgher described them to me and they sound like a real estate company that provides healthcare.
A Pittsburgher once described UPMC to me as a real estate company that provides healthcare.
accurate, possibly even overly kind
So-Fi is kind of edgy to me. I like it.
The Dolphins have had a lot of names for their stadium and Hard Rock so far is the best.
Something about Gillette Stadium sounds good, but the Dunkin’ Dome would require a cold weather city to play indoors. Don’t know if that would work.
Some people have said this already, but I don’t know if there’s a single brand with a stadium name that has ties older and deeper with its region than Levi’s does with San Francisco. Candlestick is 100% better though
Soldier Field. It’s been at that place now for 100 years. It has had a lot of events come its way over the years and has only hosted the Bears for the last 52 years. Still the best real estate of any team in the league. But its time is due and the property/ownership is not tenable to the Bears staying there.
The McCaskey failson finally realized that team valutation and income streams enhance more from owning your own stadium. Complain all you want about moving to the suburbs, but it is team owned land that they can monetize how they want to. The city is doing half-ass measures just to say “we tried” but in the end we all know the city and the state aren’t going to pony up billions just to hand to the Bears. So I’m sure we’re going to give out to a Chicago area business that no one cares for because they wrote out the most money. Going with the clownshoes that the McCaskey family is, you can call our future home the McDome. There will be no happy meal special available there.
The local radio host here inadvertently referred to the Seattle Kracken’s new arena as the Lemon Pledge arena instead of Climate Pledge. It’s catching on.
Constantly changing the name of landmarks every decade is indeed idiotic.
And I’d argue that local governments forcing taxpayers to fund building these massive new stadiums isn’t “capitalism.” Do these naming rights soften the dent in taxpayers’ wallets or not? Guessing the owners just pocket the cash. They should treat public funds as a loan and repay them to the taxpayers over time with the profits they earn. But they won’t. Must be sweet to be able to build whatever you want and get local communities to pay for it.
Busch Stadium is a favorite of mine, though it’s Baseball. Certainly better than TWA or Edward Jones Dome.
I kind of hope Southwest buys the rights for State Farm/UoP next.
Unitas Stadium would be good, but unfortunately that’s already the name of Towson University’s stadium.
Baltimore should change it to the Omar Little Memorial Field.
When the Browns came back, Al Lerner said that the stadium would be called Browns Stadium, and that he would ensure that it would stay that way by selling sponsorship rights to the four entrance gates for 30% each of the expected naming rights value and make more money that way than if he’d sold the naming rights alone. Despite being a money grubbing worm, his son continued that, but Jimmy Haslam discontinued it during the sale transition process and sold the naming rights to First Energy. Ironically, since the stadium is a municipal facility, it’s serviced by Cleveland Public Power and not CEI, the local First Energy provider.
I would have it revert back to just being Browns Stadium and sell naming rights to the gates again, but failing that the most prominent local sponsor that fits Dave’s criteria of being a good and beneficial company with a strong local history and named for a person, I’d pick Sherwin Williams.
You jinxed Paul Brown Stadium, Dave.
https://twitter.com/KelseyLConway/status/1549851285637193728
Honestly, some of these could be fixed just by shifting around corporate sponsors a little. Sell the Philadelphia rights to Liberty Mutual, you get your Liberty Stadium. Pair Seattle with Pacific Life, we get Pacific Life Field. Send Lucas Oil down to Houston, now it’s Oil Dome/The Refinery.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/bengals-close-to-deal-for-naming-rights-of-paul-brown-stadium-first-name-change-for-stadium-per-report/?fbclid=IwAR1hMvSvCAIcP8DT_g8fmoUXJEkKDJF9HJYmcYtrDUNaYc_nfK9SdU7vZZE well dave you jinxed it
Allegiant Stadium is the Raiders Roomba.
I don’t care what they call it now, the Seattle stadium is called the Clink.
Welp, the Draw Play curse strikes again. Found out today that Paul brown stadium is now renamed “Paycor stadium”. The new name sucks. This leaves only Lambeau Field and Soldier Field has the only really good NFL stadium names left, and who knows how much longer the Bears with be at Soldier Field anyways. I don’t want a world where only Lambeau Field has a good stadium name, I just don’t.