LA Rams owner Stan Kroenke wants $400m for SoFi Stadium upgrades

Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images for Hollywood Park Management Company

LA Rams owner Stan Kroenke wants $400m for SoFi Stadium upgrades

Originally posted on HITC | By Adam Williams | Last updated May 28, 2026 4:26 PM ET

Stan Kroenke privately financed the SoFi Stadium and much of the redevelopment of the surrounding Hollywood Park, but he now wants some of his money back.

Kroenke’s portfolio encompasses SoFi Stadium’s Los Angeles Rams, as well as the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, MLS’s Colorado Rapids and Premier League football club Arsenal.

Kroenke Sports & Entertainment’s history shows that the group is focused on real estate as much as it is teams.

Even before he relocated the Rams from St Louis, Kroenke plunged hundreds of millions of dollars into Ball Arena, making the stadium complex a sprawling mixed-use commercial and residential district and transforming downtown Denver in the process. The next phase of that project, slated for completion in 2032, will see a huge hotel, two apartment blocks, a new performance venue and hundreds of restaurants, retail outlets and green spaces built across a 55-acre site that is currently used as a parking lot.

Elsewhere, Stan Kroenke partnered with Commerce City, Colorado to build Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. The timing of his investment in Arsenal, in 2007, shortly after the club moved into the 60,000-capacity Emirates Stadium, was no coincidence. Nearly two decades later, Arsenal want to expand the stadium.

But the SoFi Stadium, which will stage the opening match of the US leg of this summer’s World Cup as well as events at the 2028 Olympic Games, is indisputably the jewel in the crown.

Photo by Kirby Lee/Getty Images

It cost $5bn to build and is routinely cited as the world’s best stadium. As well as the Rams’ NFL matches, it stages up to 400 events annually, ranging from superstar concerts for the likes of Taylor Swift and Beyonce to huge sports-entertainment events like WrestleMania.

That $5bn was entirely privately financed, a rarity in American stadium construction. The city of St Louis, in fact, got $790m from the NFL after contesting the Rams relocation, so one could even say that the American taxpayer is up on the deal.

However, Kroenke now wants a $400m reimbursement from the City of Inglewood for infrastructure upgrades made to the surrounding Hollywood Park, saying that they are entitled to the money under a clause in their original agreement with the local authority which stated that the reimbursement would kick in once the park generated $25m in annual tax revenue.

Inglewood, however, say that the deal is null and void because it was effectively sealed through voter initiative, which they argue should invalidate the contract, as per recent California case law.

Lawyers have been enlisted, battle lines drawn, and court documents filed.

If the two sides do not settle, the case will likely go to the California Supreme Court.

And while there is no doubt how transformative SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park have been for Inglewood, the latest drama does illustrate that when a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

This article first appeared on HITC and was syndicated with permission.

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