{"id":360457,"date":"2026-06-14T15:48:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T15:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/360457\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T15:48:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T15:48:34","slug":"why-sofi-stadium-worlds-most-expensive-arena-will-wow-the-world-cup-and-shock-soccer-purists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/360457\/","title":{"rendered":"Why SoFi Stadium, world\u2019s most expensive arena, will wow the World Cup and shock soccer purists"},"content":{"rendered":"

INGLEWOOD, Calif. \u2014 When a team of world-class architects sat down to design SoFi Stadium<\/a>, the $5 billion palace that will host Friday\u2019s U.S. World Cup opener<\/a>, they set a goal that might make soccer purists squirm.<\/p>\n

They and Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams (along with Premier League champion Arsenal and MLS\u2019s Colorado Rapids, among other sports franchises), didn\u2019t simply want a stage for Super Bowls and Olympics. They didn\u2019t just want the most magnificent stadium in the National Football League.<\/p>\n

They wanted \u201csomething different,\u201d a building with \u201cpersonality,\u201d one that would co-star with concerts and matches, one that would \u201cbe an equal participant to the entertainment,\u201d lead architect Lance Evans of HKS tells The Athletic.<\/p>\n

He and his colleagues asked themselves: \u201cCan we deliver awe just like (Lionel) Messi can deliver awe?\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, they designed the antithesis of soccer\u2019s century-old cathedrals, where the game is the only attraction. Where it\u2019s religion. Where it\u2019s everything.<\/p>\n

SoFi, the world\u2019s most expensive stadium, and several other NFL venues-turned-World Cup grounds<\/a>, will wow visitors over the coming month because they\u2019re exactly the opposite.<\/p>\n

In the first of 78 stateside World Cup matches on Friday, the U.S. men\u2019s national team will welcome Paraguay<\/a> to this spaceship-like structure south of Los Angeles. Players will arrive and descend 100 feet below terrain. When they emerge from gleaming locker rooms onto the field, walking past opulent field-side suites, they\u2019ll stare up at a 2.2 million-pound, 70,000 square-foot, 80 million-pixel \u201cInfinity Screen,\u201d a double-sided 4K videoboard that\u2019s the largest in all of sports.<\/p>\n

It will grab their attention \u2014 and yours. Via 260 embedded speakers, it will pump music and noise into your ears. It hangs from a translucent canopy that covers all 70,000 seats, plus a theatre and multi-acre plaza that \u201cexpands the notion of what a stadium is,\u201d as Evans says.<\/p>\n

From above, the canopy is fully programmable; embedded LEDs \u201cturn our roof into a television,\u201d Evans explains. It welcomes visitors before they even land at nearby Los Angeles International Airport. Its 46 operable panels can open to release hot air and make you feel simultaneously indoors and outside. There are temperature sensors but also palm trees.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n A view from outside SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles (Patrick T. Fallon \/ AFP \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful stadium,\u201d says U.S. midfielder Tyler Adams.<\/p>\n

And it offers quite the contrast with his home in the English Premier League, Bournemouth\u2019s Vitality Stadium, a cozy rectangular structure featuring four box-like stands and 11,307 seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy the difference,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n

And it will be crazy for hundreds of players coming to America for the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n

Many of soccer\u2019s most famous stadiums, from Anfield in Liverpool, England, to La Bombonera in Buenos Aires, are bare bones in comparison. Advertisements and amenities are relatively minimal. They derive their fame from mystique, from the moments they\u2019ve witnessed and the passionate humans they house every other week.<\/p>\n

Paraguay\u2019s national stadium, for example, Estadio Defensores del Chaco, is a bowl of buttressed cement with a few rectangular video boards perched atop it. A chain-link fence rings the field. Seats and facades painted red, white and blue, the colors of the Paraguayan flag, give it color. It\u2019s a fortress in part because it is relatively basic, because a fan has nowhere else to look and scream but at the field.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n A view of the Infinity Screen inside SoFi Stadium as the venue goes through preparations for the USMNT\u2019s World Cup opener against Paraguay (Henry Bushnell \/ The Athletic)<\/p>\n

At SoFi (known in FIFA\u2019s sponsorless terms as Los Angeles Stadium for the next five weeks), on the other hand, one could look at the Infinity Screen, also known as the \u201coculus\u201d; or at the digital boards on the facing of every seating level. You could go explore the fauna that \u201cdance in and out of the building,\u201d as Evans says. You could gaze off into the distance at the sprawling Hollywood Park campus, at the man-made waterfall or retail district. Or, if privileged enough, you could duck into the champagne bar or countless other hospitality spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fans that come there, they might not all be coming there for the action that\u2019s on the playing field, or the concerts,\u201d Evans explains. \u201cThey might be coming for other reasons \u2014 because their significant other wants them to come, or they might just want to be hanging out with their friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The architects, therefore, wanted to build a stadium for everyone, with everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you come to the building, you\u2019re going to have a great experience, whether you\u2019re the hardcore passionate fan that\u2019s never going to leave their seat, or you\u2019re the individual that\u2019s never gonna go to their seat,\u201d Evans says. \u201cWe wanted that both to happen, and to allow the venue to feel alive and active in both cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that sense, they wanted SoFi Stadium to reflect Los Angeles, a city and region that can\u2019t be succinctly defined. They wanted nature but also glitz; and community but also entertainment.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n An aerial view of SoFi Stadium and its roof of programmable LED panels (Patrick T. Fallon \/ AFP \/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing that we would be building in the entertainment capital of the world, in Los Angeles, the spectacle of entertainment meant so much more than sport,\u201d Evans says. \u201cThere was this opportunity to align sport, live music, entertainment, the global events on a stage, and kind of amplify the idea of a stadium to the scale and the magnitude and the impact of the city itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, when it fills on Friday, and the following week for Iran vs. New Zealand, and for six other matches over the next month, it will be far more than a soccer venue.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal here was to design something the world has never seen before, a one of one,\u201d Evans says.<\/p>\n

For many first-time World Cup visitors, it will certainly be that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INGLEWOOD, Calif. \u2014 When a team of world-class architects sat down to design SoFi Stadium, the $5 billion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[46901,27313,48,52,51,47,1333,50,49,6446,47265,1083,12902,8364,107190],"class_list":["post-360457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-fifa-mens-world-cup","tag-international-football","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-chargers","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-rams","tag-paraguay","tag-soccer","tag-sports-business","tag-turkey","tag-us-mens-national-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}