Clash between Inglewood and SoFi Stadium operators heads to vote

SoFi Stadium is booming. The deal that built it has become a smoldering pile.

Ten years ago, Rams owner Stan Kroenke and Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. happily dug ceremonial shovels into the dirt at Hollywood Park to celebrate the impending completion of the world’s most expensive stadium.

Now they are on opposite sides of a court battle that has spilled over to the Nov. 3 vote and threatens further development of the nearly 300 acres.

The feud started with advertising billboards. Last year, Inglewood signed a deal with WOW Media to place electronic advertising throughout the city – 60 digital signs carrying 108 screens. Some are bus shelter-sized kiosks, while others are 22-foot-tall street-level displays on sidewalks and medians.

These pose problems for SoFi Stadium, the Intuit Dome and the Forum, as they have their own advertising deals and sponsors who pay exclusivity fees. The venues collectively sued Inglewood and WOW Media to block the deal, raising the case in a court filing: “Would PepsiCo be willing to sponsor the Super Bowl knowing that Coca-Cola could pay WOW to erect a full-motion billboard next to the stadium?”

Skip Miller, the city’s chief attorney, said the kiosks “are very nice and blend in with the surrounding area” and that they are connected to a network that provides important traffic and safety information to thousands of drivers and pedestrians.

A judge sided with Inglewood and an appeal is underway.

Meanwhile, those opposed to the billboards are taking them to voters. One measure on the ballot is Measure BB (as in “Billboard Blight”), which would restrict billboard advertising on public property. Miller said if the bill passes, the city will challenge it in court, calling it free speech discrimination.

The signs bring in as much as $7.4 million annually, according to Inglewood budget records.

Consultants hired by the Yes on BB campaign estimate the city’s digital kiosk deal with WOW Media will generate $280,000 to $1.1 million in annual revenue, representing about 0.1% to 0.5% of Inglewood’s $238 million general fund.

John Shallman, a Los Angeles political strategist who manages the Yes on BB campaign, also noted the unusual length of the billboard agreement, which is 20 years plus two 10-year options.

“It’s biblical in length,” Sharman said. “You go back 40 years. We didn’t even have the Internet. We didn’t have cell phones.”

Advertising boards are part of that fight, but there’s more. When the development agreement was signed back in 2015, the agreement was that Hollywood Park (swap here with Kroenke’s company) would pay for all improvements around SoFi Stadium up front, with the city eventually reimbursing it. This means all road upgrades, water lines, street lights, etc. The same goes for police and emergency services on the day of the event.

Over the years, this resulted in a significant expense. Kroenke’s company now hopes to get $448 million from the city. Inglewood wired $20 million to Kroenke last year and now wants the money back.

So how come this gap is so wide? A turning point came last month when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David K. Reinart ruled that the 2015 development agreement was “void and unenforceable from the outset.”

To understand why the judge ruled as he did, it’s important to look back a decade and examine how the agreement was constructed.

One of the attractive aspects of building an NFL stadium in Inglewood is the speed with which development agreements can be drawn up and approved. Los Angeles has been without an NFL franchise for 20 years, during which time various stadium ideas have been proposed but ultimately failed. One of the obstacles is the environmental review process, which can take months or even years.

But being in California at the time, Inglewood had an opportunity to speed up the process. Backers of an NFL stadium could bring it to the Inglewood City Council as a voter initiative instead of negotiating a new development deal — one that existed in 2009, when Hollywood Park was still a racetrack.

The council can then choose to pass the initiative verbatim or send it to voters. No new environmental review is required. Sure enough, in February 2015, the Board of Governors approved the initiative 5-0.

Now, Kroenke has an approved stadium plan, not just fancy renderings, to bring to NFL owners, who 11 months later are giving the state-of-the-art facility at Hollywood Park a thumbs-up. Carson City has a competing stadium plan backed by the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders that takes the same fast-track approach as Carson City.

Regardless, the Hollywood Park plan won and the stadium was built, a $5 billion wonder that will host Super Bowl II in February. It has also hosted the World Cup, major concerts by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, and will be a swimming venue for the 2028 Summer Olympics. The Chargers moved to Los Angeles as tenants of the stadium.

“Inglewood loves SoFi Stadium,” said Miller, the city’s attorney. “Nothing will ever happen at SoFi Stadium. … As with the rest of Hollywood Park, the developer has to follow the law, just like any other developer. This developer is a very powerful, very wealthy man, and he has to follow the law just like everyone else.”

In 2015, when Kroenke and the city were pulling in the same direction, you wouldn’t hear it. Something happened in 2018 that changed the landscape of California and provided Inglewood with reasons why developers should not be required to repay nearly $500 million in public improvements.

That’s a court decision involving Moreno Valley, a city about 75 miles east of Inglewood that plans to go through the same approval process as Inglewood for a large development project. But environmental groups challenged this in court and won. A judge held that this type of development agreement requires negotiation and public hearings, not just a voter initiative. This agreement is void.

Meanwhile, things are moving forward in Inglewood. Sophie Stadium was built. Major events followed. Promises were made and promises were kept.

There has always been an open question of the city funding all of these improvements to Hollywood Park, but this arrangement is designed to ensure Inglewood can do it without losing money. The agreement says the city can keep the first $25 million in annual tax revenue from the stadium and then use the excess revenue to repay Kroenke’s company.

In May 2025, Inglewood paid $20 million.

Two months later, the city responded to Moreno Valley’s decision, deeming the development agreement invalid and demanding a refund.

Hollywood Park found this particularly galling because four times in the past decade, the city signed guarantees to Kroenke’s lenders that the money would be repaid — three of which came after Moreno Valley’s decision.

In Hollywood Park’s view, Inglewood welcomed a decade of jobs, tax revenue, increased property values ​​and increased prestige, only to walk away from the deal when the bills came due.

“Now that the city has received all the benefits, it’s time to basically honor the agreement, which is saying, ‘Well, actually, we don’t think this agreement is valid. Thank you for your support of the stadium, thank you for everything you’ve done, but we’re not going to honor our agreement,'” said John Quinn, Hollywood Park’s outside counsel on the matter.

Hollywood Park’s argument is that it followed the 2015 rules to get the city council to unanimously approve the development agreement, and the results – a bustling stadium district and surrounding development – speak for themselves.

The city said it didn’t connect the dots in the Moreno Valley case until it filed a lawsuit against Inglewood and WOW Media last year.

The city also supports its own ballot initiative, Measure AT, which would eliminate a $15 million cap on 10 percent of ticket sales paid by stadiums. For the first time, venues with fewer than 20,000 seats, including the Intuit Dome, will be subject to a 2.5% ticket sales tax.

An impact report from the city of Inglewood said the ballot measure could bring in $47 million to $50 million in additional revenue annually. The 2028 Olympics at both venues would be particularly lucrative for the city.

Hollywood Park saw this as punishment for challenging the billboard deal.

The controversial Inglewood mayoral race is also on the ballot. Butts is running for a fifth term and his primary challenger is Inglewood City Councilwoman Gloria Gray.

Meanwhile, Hollywood Park’s legal losses are mounting. Last month, a judge rejected the argument that because Inglewood is a charter city operating under its own constitution, it should abide by the original development agreement.

The city describes the fight as billionaires versus the people. People representing Kroenke’s interests say Inglewood should live up to its promises and provide the compensation it has long promised.

Lawyers representing Hollywood Park said changing the rules midway could have a chilling effect on future development in California.

“This is going to be a significant impediment to new development across the state, and we’re not just talking about the stadium,” said Quinn, chairman and founding partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP. “We’re talking about all kinds of planning and zoning decisions — including affordable housing projects.

“This will just create really damaging legal uncertainty for all development projects in California.”