Banks took bailouts and bought stadium names. Spare credit unions the lecture.

I have had enough of bankers treating credit union advertising as a scandal while their industry’s names cover America’s stadiums. The latest target is CommunityAmerica Credit Union and its reported $70 million partnership with the University of Arkansas. Once again, critics suggest that a credit union willing to compete for business has somehow betrayed its members. I reject that argument completely. CommunityAmerica owes its competitors no apology for advertising, and credit unions should stop accepting the premise that success requires an apology.

Naming rights are advertising. Banks know exactly what they purchase: visibility, recognition, and opportunities to build relationships. Television broadcasts repeat the name. Fans see it on signs and hear it during games. Potential members learn that another financial institution exists. A cooperative cannot serve people who have never heard of it. Credit unions have every reason to make themselves known, particularly when competing against banks with enormous marketing budgets.

I made this case in my April 2025 op-ed, “Let Credit Unions Stand Tall.” I returned to it that June in “Investing in Communities, Not Shareholders.” Both challenged the claim that sports sponsorships betray the cooperative mission. My position has not softened. Credit unions should use responsible marketing to reach more people, and I will defend their right to do so against attacks designed to turn visibility into a liability.

Consider what CommunityAmerica actually announced. The reported $70 million covers 13 years, averaging approximately $5.4 million annually. Arkansas’s announcement includes financial education for student athletes, plans for a campus location and additional regional branches, and Razorback checking accounts and cards. Stadium naming begins in 2027. Critics who reduce that relationship to a logo ignore its connection to delivering financial services. A large headline number does not establish that an investment is wasteful.

Nor does comparing that number with one member payout program tell the whole story. Members receive value through loan rates, savings returns, affordable services, and investments in their institution’s future. Marketing can help attract the members and business needed to sustain those benefits. Boards should evaluate that return carefully. A competing bank’s irritation is hardly a financial analysis.

An honest review would compare the sponsorship with other ways to reach the same audience. What would years of television, radio, digital advertising, and local promotions cost? How many lasting member relationships could each approach produce? How will the credit union measure whether those relationships justify the expense? Those are fair questions. Declaring the cooperative mission dead because the advertisement happens to be on a stadium answers none of them. I want credit unions to make disciplined business decisions. I also want them free to choose effective advertising without having their competitors turn every ambitious investment into a congressional complaint.

And before the banking lobby lectures anyone about stadium spending, let’s review the record.

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Citigroup, parent of Citibank, agreed in 2006 to a reported $400 million, 20-year naming arrangement for Citi Field. Treasury subsequently invested $45 billion in Citigroup through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Citi Field opened in 2009 amid controversy over the company’s federal assistance and sponsorship. Bank of America received $45 billion through TARP while its name adorned the Carolina Panthers’ stadium. JPMorgan Chase received $25 billion, with Chase Field already carrying its brand. PNC received approximately $7.6 billion while holding the naming rights to PNC Park.

Those investments were repaid or recovered. Receiving TARP assistance does not establish that bailout dollars paid sponsorship bills. But this history absolutely belongs in the debate. Banking advocates cannot erase their industry’s reliance on federal support and then act as though a credit union’s advertising agreement is an outrage against taxpayers. I will not let that double standard go unanswered.

PNC itself described its ballpark agreement as a source of marketing exposure, new business, and value for customers and shareholders. Banks understand the business case. They simply refuse to extend the same understanding to credit unions. That selective outrage reeks of hypocrisy. If advertising can help a bank grow, it can help a cooperative grow. The difference is that credit union members own the institution benefiting from that growth.

At DCUC, we have taken this argument directly to Congress. In a June 9, 2025, letter to Representatives Brian Jack and Hillary Scholten, we explained how credit union sports partnerships support financial education, local businesses, and community life. DCUC also delivered a May 2025 memorandum to congressional offices rebutting attacks involving naming rights and tax status. These investments deserve an honest assessment. Congress should resist attempts to turn ordinary competition into grounds for punishing cooperative finance.

Congress recognized the public purpose of member-owned, democratically operated, not-for-profit credit unions serving consumers, especially people of modest means. Buying advertising does not change that ownership structure or erase that purpose. The banking lobby does not get to impose an unwritten condition that credit unions must remain small, quiet, and easy to overlook to retain their tax treatment. The exemption supports a financial structure built around members. It does not require those members to surrender the marketing tools their competitors use every single day.

Servicemembers move between installations. Veterans build new lives after service. Their families need to know where to find financial institutions that understand them. Reaching those households requires visibility. I will never accept the argument that serving military families is noble but advertising the institutions serving them is somehow suspect.

Members deserve accountable boards, clear explanations, and measurable results. Every major sponsorship should be judged against those standards. CommunityAmerica deserves that fair evaluation. It should not have to defend the entire credit union model every time it buys advertising. Banks are welcome to compete through better rates and better service. They should stop asking Washington to weaken the competition they would rather not face. DCUC will continue standing up for credit unions that invest in their communities and their future. Credit unions have earned their place in public life. They belong on the field, on the scoreboard, and in the conversation.

Jason Stverak is Chief Advocacy Officer for the Defense Credit Union Council, a role he assumed in April 2024. He previously served as Deputy Chief Advocacy Officer for Federal Government Affairs at America’s Credit Unions and was interim chief advocacy officer in 2022 and 2023. Earlier in his career, he was deputy chief of staff to Senator Kevin Cramer and held senior legislative roles in Congress and advocacy organizations. A prominent voice on Capitol Hill, Stverak is a frequent media contributor and has been recognized as a top lobbyist by The Hill and the National Institute for Lobbying and Ethics.