The Super Bowl has always been played on the second Sunday of February since 2004. This year is the first time the game is being played at SoFi Sadium since it opened in 2020. Some people may not be familiar with Inglewood, CA but the city is in the Los Angeles area. LA has held the major match up seven times, at both the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl.
One major factor in deciding where the game is played is based on weather, which is why locations in California and the South come up so often. If the National Football League decides your city is worthy enough to host the most watched sporting event, your city leaders will need to put together a pitch that explains why they should play the Superbowl there.
SoFi stadium can hold up to 100,000 people. According to their website, it is located where the Hollywood Park racetrack once stood. The stadium itself is part of a 298-acre plot of land that also offers homes, hotels, and businesses.
The indoor-outdoor stadium is the biggest and most expensive one to date and cost a total of $5 billion. Construction began in 2016 and the stadium opened its doors in September of 2020. The Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers both call SoFi their home turf.
The name comes from SoFi, an online financing company. The company pays roughly $30 million every year to own the name of the stadium.
SoFI stadium itself is not very tall, as there are a lot of planes passing overhead due to the proximity of the LAX airport. In fact, the stadium is built 100-feet below street level. There is a canopy-style roof which covers guests from the rain but also allows a breeze in to cool them off.
The builders brought fans closer to the field by making some seats 50-feet closer to the field than at the LA Coliseum. They really were thinking of their fans and even brought the beach to the field by placing their cabanas behind one of the endzones.
Part of what makes this stadium so special is that there is an enormous double-sided oval video board that hangs from the center of the stadium. This will come in handy for this year’s Super Bowl halftime performance where Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and Snoop Dogg will perform.