Los Angeles Times

New football stadium’s best seats will come at a price

Rams’ top season tickets will have $100,000 seat license. Chargers ask $75,000.

- By Dan Woike dan.woike@latimes.com

The best seat at Los Angeles’ newest stadium will come with a licensing bill of $100,000 for Rams seasontick­et holders and $75,000 for Chargers season-ticket holders, the teams announced as they prepare to sell premium seats for the Inglewood stadium project.

Roughly 25% of the stadium’s seats are classified as “premium,” and beginning Tuesday season-ticket holders from both teams will be invited to view details about the project and purchase premium seats for the stadium.

The Rams and Chargers season stadium seat licensing program will be an NFL first, essentiall­y functionin­g as a 50-year deposit to help fund the $2.6 billion stadium’s constructi­on. After 50 years, the original stadium seat license cost will be repaid to whomever owns it.

Season-ticket holders will be required to pay the one-time license cost in addition to the ticket price, which will be $375 for Rams games and $350 for Chargers games.

Those ticket prices, which are the same for all three tiers of premium seats, will be frozen for the first three years the stadium is in operation.

A representa­tive for the Rams said every seat will require a stadium seat license. The price tag for the cheapest seats will be less than $1,000. The Chargers declined to release estimated pricing costs on nonpremium seats, noting that nearly each seat in the stadium also will require a stadium seat license.

Nonpremium ticket pricing should be released in the upcoming months.

“When it comes to the individual fan, you can curate this experience for yourself and you can find the appropriat­e level of pricing, the right level of seat, which team you want to identify with, and make it your own in a very personal way for your own Los Angeles journey,” Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff said. “It’s a market of 18 million people: there’s a high end, a middle end and a low end. We have to make sure this stadium grows our fan base. That it’s not limiting, but encompassi­ng.

“The stadium was designed with that in mind, to make sure every fan feels like this stadium is accessible to them.”

The most expensive seats will attempt to combine luxury, exclusivit­y and convenienc­e. Premium seats are split into three classifica­tions: All Access, VIP and Club.

The 500 “All Access” seats will be in one section 20 rows up and between the 45-yard lines on each side of the stadium. The tickets come with premium parking, food and drinks, access to the stadium’s most exclusive club space and guaranteed opportunit­ies to purchase tickets for events such as the Super Bowl.

Licenses for the “VIP” section will cost $80,000 for Rams games and $50,000 for Chargers games. The approximat­e 2,500 VIP tickets also will include parking, and food and drinks, but no guarantee of Super Bowl tickets. VIP seats will be between the 30-yard lines on the first and second levels of the stadium.

The 10,000 “Club” licenses will range from $15,000 to $35,000 for Rams games and $10,000 to $25,000 for Chargers games. The licenses come with club access but won’t include parking, food or drinks.

“This has been a long time coming, right? Twenty years ago I was at USC and Michael Ovitz was talking about how he was going to bring NFL football back to Los Angeles. And, it’s been a slow pot to boil for L.A. and L.A. fans,” said A.G. Spanos, Chargers president of business operations. “They’ve seen a lot of different renderings and a lot of different things. This is a big moment and an exciting moment for Los Angeles to now have a stadium befitting of the city.”

The stadium is scheduled to open in 2020.

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