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INGLEWOOD — When fans eventually get inside SoFi Stadium, their immediate challenge will be deciding where to look first.
Down at the field? Up at the roof? Every direction at once at the giant elliptical video screen? At the eight levels of seats rising steeply on all sides? To a bar — the building offers many — to drown that overwhelmed feeling?
The multi-billion-dollar new home of the Rams, Chargers and a multitude of scheduled national and international sports events and concerts opens for business Sunday night with a Rams game against the Dallas Cowboys. No crowd will be allowed in its 70,000 seats. NBC cameras will try to do it justice.
Its splendors are many, but a reporter and photographer who toured SoFi Stadium and covered two Rams intrasquad scrimmages there have boiled it down to 10 innovations, features and sights that stand out.
THE ROOF
It’s really a canopy, and it’s why the SoFi Stadium builders can call this the first indoor-outdoor stadium. The translucent top lets sun in, panels can be opened and closed, and open ends and sides let in breezes from the ocean five miles away.
On a warm day, it’s about 10 degrees cooler inside than outside, said Jason Gannon, managing director for SoFi Stadium and the rest of the 298-acre project financed by Rams owner Stan Kroenke on the former site of Hollywood Park racetrack.
Sofi Stadium home of the Los Angeles Rams in Inglewood on Saturday, August 22, 2020. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
THE VIDEO BOARD
They’ve stopped calling it the Oculus, but the one-of-a-kind, two-sided, 120-yards-long, 2.2 million pound structure hanging from the roof deserves a special name of some kind.
The pictures are so sharp — and so big — that, watching a Rams scrimmage from the press box on the seventh level, you were tempted to follow the action on the video screen instead of with your own eyes.
Los Angeles Rams during a scrimmage football game at Sofi Stadium in Inglewood on Saturday, August 22, 2020. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
THE HOSPITALITY
Depending on where you’re sitting, you’ll eat and drink at food stands named for Southern California streets (Fairfax, Olvera), a champagne bar, wine bar, whisky bar or tequila bar, or indoor areas with names like the Corona Beach House, the Pechanga Founders Club and the SoFi Social Club.
Much of SoFi Stadium (named for an online personal finance firm) feels like the lobby of a hip hotel.
Hipper if you’re in one of 260 luxury suites.
Champagne Bar at SoFi Stadium complete with restaurants, suites, premium spaces, bars, lounges and state of the art locker rooms is the home of the Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams located on 298 acres of the former Hollywood Park and is the centerpiece of an entertainment complex built by Rams owner and Chairman Stan Kroenke in Inglewood on Friday, September 4, 2020. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
THE STANDS
This is not your great-grandfather’s football stadium, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum or the Rose Bowl. SoFi Stadium’s seats are stacked so …read more
Source:: Los Angeles Daily News
