Editorial: Do the Pittsburgh Pirates really need a new scoreboard?

Apparently the Pittsburgh Pirates decided to save the Steelers from all the sports fan outrage last week.

Sure, the football team started it with the announcement July 11 that Heinz Field was changing its name to Acrisure Stadium, selling the naming rights to a Michigan-based financial and tech insurance company that almost no one in Southwestern Pennsylvania knew existed.

With all the memes and social media venting and even a petition to change the name back, it seemed like the Pirates were in the rare position of being the more popular sports team on the river.

Until Friday. That’s when the baseball team decided to get in the game with a little announcement of its own.

The team and the Sports and Exhibition Authority announced that PNC Park would get a new, more high-tech scoreboard.

If you have ever bought a new flat-screen television or upgraded your computer monitor or even got the newest phone with the best graphics, you know that this kind of technology is definitely an enhancement. It also seldom comes cheap.

So it makes sense that the team and the authority will pay out for the upgrade.

But then they mentioned the surcharge. It will cost fans another $1 per seat to pay for the scoreboard.

Businesses long have built the cost of improvements and capital investments into the price of the product. That’s nothing new. Breaking it all out in surcharges so customers watch the bottom line ratchet up is the kind of thing you associate more with plane fares and new cars than baseball tickets though.

The cost is expected to be spread over the remainder of the team’s lease — through 2030. That begs the question of whether the team plans on doing anything to increase the number of butts in seats to help pay it off. Or perhaps that ship has sailed already.

The Pirates are solidly in the middle of the pack in the National League Central. They have their typical losing record — the one even the faithful have come to expect. That is no doubt why they are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to attendance. Only Tampa Bay, Miami and Oakland are packing fewer people into the stands.

Pittsburghers don’t go to the games. The park has a capacity of more than 38,000, but average attendance is only about 36% of that, according to Major League Baseball information.

The Pirates leadership started out the season splashily playing up the newest features. Giant-sized bobbleheads in the kids playground area. A smorgasbord of new food options. A gallery of the team’s history in the Picnic Park. An ad before the home opener trumpeted all the reasons you should come to the ballpark — notably quiet about the baseball.

Maybe the team could save the $1 surcharge since fans aren’t really showing up anyway and borrow the big ketchup bottle scoreboard from the Steelers instead.