NFL Preseason Football: Raiders Visit Massive LA’s SoFi Stadium, Other Half Of Stadium Odd Couple With Allegiant Stadium In Las Vegas
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
If Raiders owner Mark Davis wanted Allegiant Stadium’s design look to have the feel of a sleek sports car, then SoFi Stadium has the palatial girth of high-powered amenity-packed modern NASCAR driver’s motor home.
LVSportsBiz.com visited $5 billion, 70,000-seat SoFi Stadium for the first time Saturday for the Raiders-Rams preseason game and found the scope of the NFL home for the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers much bigger than just about any sports venue in this country.
At 3.1 million square feet, SoFi Stadium is the largest venue in the National Football League, said Jason Gannon, managing director of SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park. “The site’s 300 acres gave us a lot to play with,” Gannon told LVSportsBiz.com in an interview before the Raiders-Rams exhibition game tonight.
Eight-level SoFi Stadium offers a lot of seating options, plus an indoors-outdoors feel for fans. About 53,000 fans saw the Rams and Chargers play a week ago — the first time NFL fans were able to experience the stadium after no fans attended games inside the spacious venue a year ago because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
HKS Architects of Dallas designed the stadium as part of a larger 298-acre redevelopment of the former Hollywood Park racetrack south of I-10 and east of the 405 in LA. Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s redevelopment includes retail and commercial development, plus a 6,000-seat YouTube theater. The redevelopment also includes 25 acres of park land, the 450,000-square-foot NFL building, 300 apartment units and 500,000 square feet of retail.
Oh, by the way, Kroenke also owns the NHL Colorado Avalanche and the NBA Denver Nuggets.
In contrast, the Raiders stadium footprint is 62 acres, less than one-fourth the size of the Kroenke redevelopment project. The former home of the Lakers, the Forum, sits near SoFi Stadium. Keep in mind the NBA Los Angeles Clippers are building their new arena nearby and will eventually leave Staples Center in downtown LA to be a neighbor of the NFL Rams and Chargers.
It’s hard to watch an NFL game in this building without taking in the oval-shaped, double-sided monster-sized scoreboard that hangs above the field. It’s part of the 90,000 square feet of LED display action inside the venue. And above the giant oval screen is the transparent roof that easily covers the seating bowl and playing surface plus the pedestrian plaza outside of the playing action.
Both Allegiant Stadium and SoFi Stadium opened in 2020 to no fans because of the COVID-19 pandemic. LVSportsBiz.com last year did a compare-and-contrast of this Odd Couple of NFL stadiums. SoFi Stadium was finished in the July/August 2020 timeframe, Gannon said.
Before the Raiders cashed in big-time with Southern Nevada’s $750 million public subsidy for the Raiders’ $2 billion stadium project, the team actually gave a look at Los Angeles — again. The Raiders played in LA from 1982-94 and enjoys a strong following in Southern California. Indeed, many Raiders fans from metro LA made the four-hour trek along Interstate15 to see the Allegiant Stadium construction site before the venue opened in late July 2020.
While Allegiant Stadium’s construction was subsidized, Kroenke is privately financing the redevelopment project, which includes SoFi Stadium.
An interesting architectural feature of SoFi Stadium is its indoor-outdoor feel, with both ends of the stadium being open while lots of natural light filters through the roof. Frank Lloyd Wright would appreciate SoFi Stadium’s inside/outside look. The upper bowl features outdoor space amid the concessions and points of sale, allowing fans to watch a game on the field and feel like it’s an indoor game, while also being outdoors in the concessions area in the upper bowl.
For the bigness of the stadium, there are also many aesthetic touches — the outdoor suite areas, the fountains outside level six and the many outdoor stairs to complement the escalators. Plus, an interesting stadium fact — because the building was constructed 100 feet into the ground in light of nearby LAX, level six of the eight-level structure is the entrance/exit level.
“Having indoor-outdoor is popular here in LA,” Gannon said. “It’s embracing Southern California living.”
Sofi Stadium’s eight-level structure expands outward more than domed, 65,000-seat Allegiant Stadium, which has a more vertical feel to its venue.
Back at Allegiant Stadium, Stamford, Connecticut-based WWE is staging SummerSlam, one of its four premier annual events. Fans at the WWE event have been tweeting that the point of sale system is down at Allegiant Stadium, which is a cash-free venue. So, concessions stands were handing out free water and soda, but no food, one fan told LVSportsBiz.
In the coming years, SoFi Stdium will also be busy. Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel bought the naming rights for the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl, while the Super Bowl is set for SoFi Stadium in February 2022. WWE’s Wrestlemania is scheduled for 2023 and the stadium will host the college football national championship in 2023. In 2028, the Summer Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies will also be at SoFi Stadium.
The Rams reported that there were 68,834 tickets distributed for tonight’s game.
Like Allegiant Stadium, SoFi Stadium is also working on trying to improve communications to fans to help them know where to park and also train stadium workers so they can better assist fans. Many struggled to find their designated parking zones.
“Opening anything is challenging,” Gannon said. “It’s a big building and a lot to get to know.”
