About Acrisure Stadium
Acrisure Stadium, formerly known as Heinz Field, is a football stadium located in the North Shore neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It primarily serves as the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League (NFL) and the University of Pittsburgh Panthers college football team. The stadium opened in 2001, replacing Three Rivers Stadium.
The stadium is renowned for its loud and passionate atmosphere, driven by the "Terrible Towel" waving fans. It features a natural grass surface, which has often been a topic of discussion due to the challenging weather conditions late in the season. The open south end of the stadium provides a spectacular view of the downtown Pittsburgh skyline and the bridges crossing the Allegheny River.
Funded in conjunction with PNC Park (home of the Pirates) and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the stadium was part of a major revitalization of Pittsburgh's riverfront. While the renaming in 2022 ended the iconic relationship with the Heinz ketchup brand, the massive ketchup bottles that once adorned the scoreboard remain a part of local lore.
Ownership of the venue rests with the Sports and Exhibition Authority of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, a public entity that leases the building to the Steelers organisation controlled by the Rooney family under a lease running through 2031. The naming-rights transition from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium in July 2022 was worth an estimated 150 million US dollars across ten years, replacing the 57-million-dollar Heinz deal from 2001. The stadium's Great Hall houses six Vince Lombardi Trophies displayed inside custom-built rotating glass cases from Goppion of Milan, the same specialist that manufactured the vitrines for the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. The vast steel superstructure came out of nearby Braddock's Edgar Thomson Works, a nod to the region's steelmaking heritage.