An arbitrator has sided with the Pittsburgh Steelers in a long-running battle with the Sports & Exhibition Authority over which entity was responsible for paying for improvements to the main scoreboard at Acrisure Stadium before the 2018 season.
As reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, arbitrator Gary Caruso capped the damages the football team is entitled to at $964,015 — nearly $236,000 less than the Steelers had originally sought — and ruled against its request for prejudgment interest totaling nearly $300,000 more.
According to Mark Belko of the Post-Gazette, the dispute involved $3 million improvements made by the Steelers, through affiliate PSSI Stadium LLC, to the scoreboard at the south end of the stadium. The Steelers expanded the size of the scoreboard’s video board to 41 feet by 124 feet from 30 feet by 95 feet and enhanced the picture quality.
The Steelers spent $3 million to improve the scoreboard, and the SEA had agreed to reimburse the team $1.8 million to cover the cost of replacing the 30-foot-by-95-foot screen with one of equal size and to pay for the higher picture quality. That left $1.2 million in dispute.
"Caruso found that the expansion constituted a capital repair under the Steelers’ lease," Belko reported. "That meant that the SEA, as the stadium owner, was on the hook for the improvement because it is required to cover the cost of capital repairs.
"The authority had contended that the changes the team made represented a major expansion of the scoreboard and weren’t repairs eligible for reimbursement as defined by the lease."
The opposing sides in the dispute, which was settled in December but only came to light in the Post-Gazette through its right-to-know request, cited different lease agreement clauses in making their respective cases, according to Belko.
The SEA cited a clause in the lease that in part defines capital repairs as “major repairs of components to the communications system and the scoreboard (including the control room, message board, video board, bulbs, and circuit breaker panels).”
The Steelers based their case on another lease clause — one that states that capital repairs shall not include “upgrades to components of the scoreboard more frequently than once every seven years.”
They maintained the word “upgrade” could mean to increase in size, thus making the expanded video board eligible for reimbursement.
“This language cannot be ignored as though it doesn’t exist,” Caruso wrote, regarding the clause the team cited. “It is not ambiguous. The clear implication of that provision is that if you upgrade a component to the scoreboard after the component in question has existed more than seven years then that upgrade would be a capital repair.”
While the SEA argued that the clause the Steelers cited was meant to apply to changes in technology involving scoreboard components and not a change in the physical size of such components, Mr. Caruso disagreed, writing “if that is what was meant then that is what it should have said.”
