LOS ANGELES. The world’s most expensive arena with the world’s largest arena screen and the world’s perhaps (?) best national team on the pitch.
Here’s how to experience it on the spot.
This must have been the last real wake-up flight for me this World Cup. I think
Regardless, five hours after crawling out of my hotel bed in Sunnyvale, I’m sitting in a press room in Los Angeles, roughly 550 kilometers south.
It was time to see “La Roja” again. Seeing Lamine Yamal again.
Also seeing reacquaintance with SoFi Stadium.
A completely otherworldly “spacead” arena in every way.
Cost close to SEK 55 billion
When the arena began to be built for the city’s two NFL teams (Rams and Chargers) in 2016, the goal was already there that this would be something different from what had been seen before. Not just a sports arena but an entertainment mecca built for just about every form of supporter and individual. When construction was completed and inaugurated in 2020, Los Angeles’ new arena flagship was the most expensive arena ever built – in the world. 5.5 billion dollars (equivalent to almost SEK 55 billion).
The walk up towards SoFi Stadium. Along water. Photo: Makoto Asahara
And of course it shows. Because this arena has everything you can imagine that a modern event-friendly building should have. Watercourses, waterfalls and palm trees, both outside and inside the arena pillars. Food and drink sales in all possible forms, varieties and prices. Mile-long queues, especially for the souvenir stalls. Escalators to the right and left. Barriers to VIP lodges and luxury spaces on the right and left as well. Apparently (although I didn’t find them on my spontaneous tour) there are also supposed to be four “breastfeeding pods” and two soothing, “multisensory rooms”. And then the glass-enclosed, sound-absorbing press box is not one of them.
But above all, there is an over 74,000 square meter large, rounded screen, called an “infinity screen”, hanging from the arena roof. It cost close to SEK 400 million to build and is, of course, the largest you can find in a sports arena. Above it, the ceiling is built of LED screens. In case the arena feels like signaling something to the airplanes passing just over on their way to land at the Los Angeles airport.
Indoor palms. A common sight inside the small squares found in the interior of the arena. Photo: Makoto Asahara
“All the queues are absolutely crazy”
While I’m floating around before kick-off among all the red-clad fans, I also find two yellow-clad fans in the crowd.
– If you demonstrate, maybe Sweden will get back into the WC, says LA-based Swede Christina Morley with a laugh.
She and her husband are in the arena for the first time.
– It is absolutely fantastic. The arena is great, but our seats are very high up. We will probably be able to hit the ceiling with our hands, she says and points up towards a distant height up on the fifth floor.
It is the most expensive football stadium ever built.
– I could understand that.
What’s the sickest thing you’ve seen so far here in the arena?
– I would probably say all queues. They are absolutely crazy. But the food is also actually really good, says Christina, looking at a devoured plate of vegan chicken with fries.
Well, even different food preferences have been thought of in the design of this modern (soccer) entertainment palace.
Zero tension
From all that’s on offer in this game-day spaceship, it’s understandable that celebrities like Penelope Cruz (huge cheers), a handful of Boston Red Sox players (booed) and Alexia Putellas (remarkably cool reaction) made it there and appeared on the monster screen this Thursday in LA.
And the match then? It trundled Spain home without having to move against an Austria who were crushed rather than crushed (which is usually the modus operandi of a Ralf Rangnick team otherwise).
Suspense and drama? Well, there wasn’t much of it. But Spain certainly looked like they could be, and will be, the world’s best national team when everything is summed up in a few weeks. Which has its own entertainment value anyway somehow.
And regardless, it’s an arena built so you can’t get bored. Regardless of what actually happens on the pitch.
