Los Angeles Stadium and Entertainment District cost balloons to $4.25b as Los Angeles Rams Owner Stan Kroenke takes out $2.25b loan to finance construction

Per Daniel Kaplan at the Sports Business Journal, the costs at the Los Angeles Stadium and Entertainment District have exploded as the former estimate of $2.6b has now skyrocketed to $4.25b requiring Los Angeles Rams Owner Stan Kroenke to secure a $2.25b loan from a banking consortium:

The $4.25 billion cost for the 298-acre site just four miles from LAX airport more than doubles the most expensive stadium ever built in the U.S., the $1.7 billion spent on MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The cost also includes the value of a 6,000-seat amphitheater but not the planned retail and commercial development, as well as the building of a new NFL Network home that is expected to drive the total cost of the project close to $5 billion if not more, the finance sources said.

The price tag has skyrocketed since NFL owners first approved the stadium in January 2016, when Stan Kroenke estimated a price tag of $2.3 billion. It soon rose to $2.6 billion, and then in March got cited in media reports as $3 billion. Part of the soaring cost is due to ensuring that the venue can withstand an earthquake, and the new projected figure includes what are known as soft costs, which cover items such as access roads and utilities and by themselves are budgeted at $850 million, the sources said.

The Rams declined to comment.

The loan is more one of personal financing than anything affecting the football team itself. But what’s important to take away is the sheer scale of the project.

Also included in the story is a note that Kroenke and his wife are committing $1.6b of their own money to construction, a full $200m more than the cost of the last sale of an NFL franchise: the $1.4b purchase of the Buffalo Bills by Terry and Kim Pegula.

It’s just a massive, massive undertaking for a facility that will host Super Bowl LVI, the 2023 College Football Playoff National Championship, portions of the 2028 Summer Olympics and I’m sure many, many, many other events of national attention in the years following its completion.