The stadium where the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers will play will be the hub of a 300-acre district. (Courtesy L.A. Sports & Entertainment District)
The slow drive to field level at the NFL stadium under construction in Inglewood, Calif., takes visitors down a dirt road 100 feet below ground. The hole dug to build the stadium, twice as deep as the one at the Dallas Cowboys’ huge AT&T Stadium, was required to meet FAA guidelines for a building that sits below a flight path to Los Angeles International Airport.
At street level, as part of the sprawling 300-acre property, giant earth scrapers work in tandem to rearrange dirt elsewhere on site, where Los Angeles Rams owner and developer Stan Kroenke is building an extensive mixed-use project. It’s a city within a city, the next generation of “live, work, play” environments attached to sports and entertainment facilities.
To get a sense of the project’s massive scope, observers notice a long line of construction trailers forming 55,000 square feet of temporary office space. The central compound, for general contractors AECOM Hunt/Turner Construction and owner’s representative Legends Global Planning, is perhaps the biggest that’s been seen in sports development.
All told, the $5 billion investment is split roughly in half between the stadium and the entertainment district, amassing 13.5 million square feet under Kroenke’s control. When the stadium opens for the Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers in the summer of 2020, the building’s 3.2 million square feet will top the Cowboys’ stadium as the NFL’s biggest footprint.
Make no mistake: Kroenke’s bold vision represents the future of the NFL, still the most powerful league in the U.S, and sports in general. It’s the next step in mixed-use, moving beyond recent projects such as the master-planned Battery Atlanta next to SunTrust Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves, and others that have grown organically over the past 20 years connected to big league sports venues.
Over the next five years in Inglewood, the first chunk of ancillary development will encompass up to 1 million square feet of retail space with 180 businesses, 15 to 20 restaurants and a 15-screen movie theater, plus a 300-room four-star hotel and 500 apartments, the first of 2,000 residential units proposed for the district. Project officials expect to announce a hotel partner by early 2019, said Chris Hibbs, chief revenue officer for Legends Global Sales, the agency marketing the stadium.
The stadium itself serves as the NFL’s blueprint moving forward in a high-tech society where fans consume everything on their mobile devices. It’s a “long-term play” to form a new fan base in today’s digital age, said Kevin Demoff, the Rams’ executive vice president of football operations and chief operating officer.
“We were fortunate to have a pretty good season last year, but nothing helped our year more than Todd Gurley having the greatest fantasy football run in the history of the NFL over three weeks, and the whole story of people donating money to his charitable foundation because he had all these points,” Demoff said. “You have to bring the entirety of the NFL to the fans. If you’re a Jets fan, just because you come to the Rams games, you can still follow the Jets everywhere you are in our stadium. That doesn’t harm our brand or the Chargers’ brand. It’s about making people more die-hard NFL fans … that’s the way it starts.”
The new stadium’s technology helps create that immersion with its giant oval-shaped video board. It takes the center-hung concept in a stadium setting one level higher than the Atlanta Falcons’ halo board at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. In Inglewood, the dual-sided “oculus” contains 70,000 square feet of 4K video display, supported by five LED rings and 3,000 video monitors on the public concourses and premium spaces.
“It’s a building that can flip and change very easily from a big concert Friday night to game on Sunday, to the other team’s game on Monday night,” Hibbs said.
Apart from the traditional digital signs, the roof canopy made of ETFE, a hard but transparent plastic material, provides additional billboard space. A roof equipped with a video screen is part of the design, and there are opportunities for sponsors to advertise to the skies, Gannon said. LAX stood as the world’s fifth busiest airport in 2017, according to airline travel groups.
It’s all part of embracing the “disruption stage of every piece of the fan experience right now,” Demoff said.
“It’s about being able to bring all of those comforts [of home] into the stadium so people don’t have to change their habits the moment they walk into the building,” he said. “The idea that fans have to sacrifice something, anything, to come to your game from the way they operate their daily lives is a farce.”
The project also stands out as the new West Coast headquarters of NFL Media. NFL Network, now housed in Culver City, moves to Inglewood in 2021 after the league signed a deal earlier this year to become the district’s first tenant. The 200,000-square-foot building, to include an outdoor studio for the first time, will be home to about 500 employees.
Apart from the brick and mortar, there will be plenty of green space, spanning 12 to 15 miles of running trails and an eight-acre lake that’s part of the archery competition for the 2028 Olympic Games.
For Legends, ground zero for its marketing effort is the L.A. Stadium Premiere Center in tech-heavy Playa Vista, known as “Silicon Beach.” Since the center opened in August 2017, Legends’ 100-person staff has been meeting with hundreds of Rams and Chargers season-ticket holders to sell premium seats at the new stadium, starting with suites that sell for $300,000 to $800,000 a year, a sum covering both teams’ games.
There are seven suite products and 260 total suites. The high-end inventory, the 24 Owners Suites at midfield, has sold out. Legends is now selling the Executive Suites and the Patio Suites for both teams. The Executive Suites sit 19 rows from the field in the corners of the lower bowl, which are the closest to the action in the NFL, according to Hibbs.
The two levels of patio suites built along the sidelines spill into an indoor/outdoor hospitality space for those patrons to enjoy the California sunshine on Sunday afternoons, Hibbs said.
Virtually every seat in the stadium carries a seat license, one-time fees running as high as $100,000 for the Rams and $75,000 for the Chargers. By comparison, the Cowboys seat licenses ran as high as $150,000. For the two most recently completed NFL stadiums, Atlanta Falcons’ high-end seat licenses cost $45,000 and the Minnesota Vikings’ top price was $9,500.
Rams and Chargers seat license holders get their money back after 50 years. The teams are the first in the NFL to adopt that model, Hibbs said. In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors are doing something similar, returning after 30 years seat license fees that were used to help pay for construction of Chase Center, their new San Francisco arena.
On a Thursday morning in late June, the premiere center is busy with prospective buyers. In Inglewood, the overall response among premium seat purchasers has been outstanding, Hibbs said, in large part because those deals give customers the rights to buy tickets for the 2022 Super Bowl and the 2023 College Football Playoff National Championship, two events already booked at the new stadium.
“The place to be, the ‘see and be seen’ aspect of Los Angeles is part of that, not unlike it is at Staples Center,” Hibbs said. “The cachet of a certain club or courtside seat is more than just watching the Lakers. We have some of that here in Inglewood.”
It’s been 15 years since the Super Bowl last took place in Southern California, and that’s another reason why interest is high, Demoff said. It’s been much longer — 46 years — since the Final Four was played in Los Angeles, but Inglewood is making its bid, starting with the 2027 event.
“One thing we consistently hear is that the West Coast really hasn’t had a stadium to go attract these national events,” he said. “Now, between us and the new Raiders stadium in Las Vegas and the improvements [at University of Phoenix Stadium], we’re hearing more about the West Coast.”
The premiere center also plays host to prospective tenants for the district as project officials market that part of the business. The high-tech models for both the stadium and district show the boundaries set aside for mixed use as a shadow passes from an airplane flying over the property. Those lines will change over time as development progresses, Hibbs said.
The stadium has the flexibility to grow from 70,240 seats to 100,000 depending on the event. Apart from Super Bowl, the CFP and potentially the Final Four, the new stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2028 Olympic Games. Officials are in negotiations to host WWE WrestleMania. The stadium is also in the mix for 2026 World Cup as FIFA narrows the final list of U.S. facilities for that event.
The stadium’s footprint extends to a 6,000-seat performance venue next door, which sits under the same roof canopy as the bigger building. The smaller facility will be marketed as a midsize concert venue with the goal of booking 75 to 100 events a year. It will also accommodate esports’ Los Angeles Gladiators, which Kroenke owns and are part of the Overwatch League.
The third element, the outdoor Champions Plaza, situated outside the south end of the stadium, will be activated by the teams for pregame tailgates on game days. On days when the teams aren’t playing football, the vision is to host small concerts, farmers markets and other community activities. The plaza will be heavily landscaped with a water feature and a natural amphitheater. A year-round restaurant be accessible to the plaza and the stadium, Hibbs said.