Super Bowl LV just the beginning for Rams’ Inglewood stadium
Nick Wagoner
http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/29475/super-bowl-lv-just-the-beginning-for-rams-inglewood-stadium
The NFL announced Tuesday that the Los Angeles Rams’ forthcoming Inglewood stadium will host Super Bowl LV in 2021. For anyone paying attention throughout the relocation process and, especially, during the team’s relocation announcement, that news didn’t come as a surprise.
That’s because Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke’s $2.6 billion stadium and development project will become the most lavish stadium project in North American sports the day it opens. Tuesday’s Super Bowl announcement was a mere formality, but perhaps more important, it’s also all but certain to be just the first of many such declarations in the coming years.
“Los Angeles is built to host the Super Bowl,” Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. “We helped forge this great American tradition as its very first host in 1967 and now, at long last, we’re bringing it back where it belongs. L.A. is already welcoming a record number of visitors from around the world and Super Bowl LV will bring even more economic prosperity to our region.”
That prosperity figures to carry over to other major sporting events that the Inglewood stadium will be capable of hosting. Because of the stadium’s high tech, translucent roof, there’s nothing that it can’t host. Which means that the combination of the futuristic venue, the city’s weather and its abundance of hotel rooms is right at the front of the line to host everything from Final Fours to college football championship games to the Olympics to the World Cup.
With the first of what figures to be plenty of Super Bowls in hand, the Inglewood stadium is also throwing its name in the hat for the 2022 Final Four, 2023 college football championship game and is part of the city’s bid for the 2024 Olympics. If U.S. soccer puts in a World Cup bid for 2026, Inglewood’s stadium would also be a part of that proposal. WWE’s Wrestlemania event figures to be coming to Los Angeles at some point as well and the Rams’ pitch to the NFL also included the idea of hosting the Oscars at a theatre that will be constructed in the Inglewood development.
All of that, plus other NFL events like the scouting combine and NFL draft are possibilities for Kroenke’s palace and its surrounding structures.
“On the heels of the National Football League’s historic return to Los Angeles, the Rams are proud to be part of such a significant regional effort of teamwork, leadership and vision to bring the Super Bowl back to Southern California,” Kevin Demoff, the Rams chief operating officer, said. “We would like to thank the NFL owners for giving us this opportunity to host the nation’s biggest event in sports and entertainment at our world-class stadium, to showcase the great cities of Los Angeles and Inglewood and to deliver an incredible experience for fans from across the globe.”
Super Bowl LV will be the first hosted in the Los Angeles area since the 1993 edition pitting the Dallas Cowboys against the Buffalo Bills. It will be the eighth game played in the metropolitan area and also brings the league full circle as the Los Angeles Coliseum hosted Super Bowl I in 1967.
According to the Rams, the city’s Super Bowl bid included the promise of “60,000 hotel-room nights (with the possibility of generating up to 100,000 total room nights) as well as other official and unofficial events to be hosted throughout the region.”
Construction on the Inglewood stadium is expected to begin later this year with the opening of the stadium set for 2019.
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Agamemnon
