Did the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs say they are boycotting Pride Nights? No, that's not true: Neither the Steelers nor the Chiefs have publicly stated they were boycotting Pride Nights. The post saying so did not offer any evidence to back up its claim but it seems to have originated on a website with a satire disclaimer.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on November 10, 2024. It said:
Steelers Stand with Chiefs to Boycott Pride Nights - A Bold Statement Against Woke Culture!.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Nov 18 00:39:11 2024 UTC)
Two websites that both describe themselves as satire -- Esspots (archived here) and SpaceXMania (archived here) -- published similar claims on September 9, 2024.
In its comments, the Facebook post directed readers to the website (archived here) dhtavern.com. Despite its headline -- "Steelers Stand with Chiefs to Boycott Pride Nights" -- this article instead was a fake story about the NFL disqualifying seven players for kneeling during the national anthem at the start of the season. Lead Stories determined that story was copied from another website, fancy4zone.com (archived here), which published its version on September 7, 2024.
A search of Google News (archived here) did not confirm the claim of seven players getting disqualified for anthem kneeling, which would not have gone unnoticed if it had happened. A search of the NFL website using a Google search (archived here) also did not confirm that claim.
A search of Google News (archived here) using the wording of the post on Facebook did not turn up results confirming it.
Lead stories contacted the Chiefs and Steelers for comment and will update this story if it receives a response.
Chiefs
Lead Stories could not locate credible evidence that the Kansas City Chiefs are boycotting Pride Nights on its website with a search of Google (archived) or their X account (archived here). A search of Google News (archived here) also did not turn up credible media reports, though it did show fact checks of similar claims from satire websites.
Steelers
There was no statement from the Pittsburgh Steelers about Pride Nights found on its website (archived here) or X account (archived here) either. A Google search (archived here) of the Steelers website using the words "Pride Nights" did not support the claim.
Claims of NFL teams related to Pride events as well as players getting banned for anthem kneeling are common themes among satire websites. Lead Stories previously fact checked a claim about the Chiefs supposedly refusing to participate in Pride month.
At the time this fact check was written, PolitiFact had reviewed the same claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning the Pittsburgh Steelers can be found here, regarding the Kanas City Chiefs here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning LGBTQ+ people and issues can be found here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning football teams can be found here.
