Los Angeles stadium undergoes World Cup facelift

LOS ANGELES – Hundreds of corner seats were ripped out of Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium and truckloads of freshly harvested sod were beginning the 1,930km journey from Washington state on May 12, as the venue puts the finishing touches on its facelift for the World Cup.

The US$5 billion (S$6.4 billion) stadium has also had to bury its National Football League (NFL)-standard synthetic turf under a complicated overlay of sand and flooring material, and remove all corporate sponsor signage, in the race to be ready for the United States’ first match against Paraguay in less than a month.

“No sleep. We’ll sleep later!” joked Otto Benedict, senior vice-president of facility and campus operations, one day before the venue is officially turned over to FIFA and renamed the brand-neutral Los Angeles Stadium.

Because American football pitches are narrower, and football fields require extra space for players to take corner kicks and throw-ins, officials removed 100 seats at each corner to squeeze in a playing surface compliant with FIFA rules.

Football’s world governing body FIFA initially wanted to have pitches with dimensions up to 80 metres wide at the corners, but realised that none of the 11 NFL stadiums being used could meet that distance, said Benedict.

“I think they made a great collaboration with us and all the other NFL stadiums to say, ‘How far can we get’?”

SoFi Stadium already had some “demountable” seats in the corner, that could be removed “LEGO-style”, but the decision was taken to also tear out two extras rows of permanent seats at two corners to create space.

The silver lining is that fans who have purchased seats by those corners will be sitting right on top of the action, Benedict told AFP.

As at May 12, the view from the corners was still a vast, sandy rectangle, with no grass in sight.

Grass was due to be harvested in the Pacific Northwest on the night of May 12, put immediately into refrigerated trucks, and driven directly to the stadium without stopping by teams of drivers working in shifts.

The idea is for the sod to spend “the least amount of time in the truck coming down here”, said Benedict.

While beginning installation just a month out from the first kick-off might seem tight, he pointed to the trial use of a hybrid surface with natural grass and synthetic fibres at last year’s Concacaf Nations League games at the SoFi Stadium.

“We built this exact field with this exact system that’s in there now last year, and test-ran how that would go,” he said. “This 30 days is giving us the right amount of time to get the grass in, get it rooted and allow FIFA (to) take over the building tomorrow.”

With its transparent roof covering, the stadium has the advantage of greenhouse-like conditions that can help the grass to thrive.

The installation will take two days, after which the grass will benefit from a newly installed irrigation system and grow lights. AFP