INGLEWOOD — Greater L.A.’s newest and splashiest sports facility is but a few months old, but the Intuit Dome, the new home of the Clippers – finally, a permanent home for the franchise in its 41st season in L.A. – has continued a trend that defines North America’s second-largest market.
Elsewhere, teams and owners routinely seek municipality and taxpayer help for new venues. Here, for more than six decades, professional sports facilities have routinely been privately financed and owned: Dodger Stadium, the Forum, Staples Center, soccer stadiums for the Galaxy and LAFC, $5 billion SoFi Stadium for the Rams and Chargers, and now the $2 billion Intuit Dome right across Century Boulevard, the objective of owner Steve Ballmer almost from the time he purchased the club.
The Clippers have now played 17 games in the new place, and people throughout the organization are still getting used to and appreciating the convenience of having everything – games, practices, executive offices, sales staff, etc. – in one location. The effects don’t show up just on the court.
“There was somebody on the ticketing team who was working on some big sales program and needed a little coaching up,” Gillian Zucker, CEO of Halo Sports and Entertainment, the Clippers’ parent company, was saying the other day.
“And I was like, ‘I know where a coach is.’ So (I) just walk down a couple of flights and find Ty (Lue) and I tell him what’s going on. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll come right up.’ And he comes up and walks through the ticket floor, shakes people’s hands, talks to the folks that are working on deals that they need help closing or need a little boost of energy. He got on a couple of calls (with) people who are buying tickets and spoke to them.
“That sort of thing can’t happen if you’re not all in the same place. … It really does feel like one team, like we’re all in it together.”
Whether the region’s newest arena truly helps transform the Clippers’ organization will ultimately be determined on the court. But it has already transformed Inglewood, and particularly that corner of Prairie and Century, with SoFi and the Dome as neighbors, Hollywood Park Casino and the Cosm event venue in between, and the Forum still standing as a concert venue to the north.
The impact on Inglewood proper likely will depend on how often the average resident gets caught in traffic on game days and nights. (A permanent People Mover or similar connection – a monorail, perhaps? – between those attractions and the Hawthorne/Lennox Metro Rail station would help, but to this point it’s a victim of political forces.)
Still, how envious must they be in, say, Chicago, where both the Bears and White Sox want new venues but have been told by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker that it’s not happening.
The facility, for those who haven’t yet visited, is spectacular. The 80,000-square-foot outdoor plaza is a gathering place that welcomes fans on their way into the building with, among other things, two bars, a restaurant, a 5,000-square-foot team store and a full-length outdoor court for shooting around. The lobby inside the building is expansive, and the walls in the spacious concourse include more than 1,540 jerseys from participating high school programs throughout California, as well as a jersey finder through your phone to locate a particular team’s jersey.
I still haven’t found my alma mater’s jersey yet. I’ll keep looking. But the objective seems to be to establish this as the state’s home office for hoops.
And, with Ballmer’s objective to establish a definitive home-court advantage, there is The Wall, a 4,500-seat, 51-row section, floor to ceiling, at the end of the building right next to the visitors’ bench, reserved for Clippers fans only. It features a supporters’ safe-standing section intended for the hardiest and most devoted, who wave thundersticks and Fathead-style posters at opponents at the free-throw line and cheer and chant more like a college rooting section.
The Clippers’ PR staff has actually kept track of how opponents fare shooting into the Wall. For the record, the numbers through 17 home games are 128 of 177 (72.3%) from the free-throw line, which would be 29th in the league for an individual team, and 104 for 312 (33.3%) from 3-point range, which would be 27th. Word has spread, since only six visiting teams have chosen to shoot in that direction in the second half.
“I think that’s the best thing about this arena,” center Ivica Zubac said after the Clippers’ 102-92 victory over Golden State on Friday. “They make it fun. They’re engaged the whole game, they’re giving us support.”
The designers of this arena thought of everything. For example: In planning the officials’ quarters, they consulted with the National Basketball Referees Association, which suggested that a conference area be included. They got that, and the room is also decorated with large photos of great officials of the past.
The huge oval-shaped Halo board hovering over the court represents the next generation of scoreboards, and it provides an even better view of the game for those folks sitting in the top rows.
In a conversation with Zucker several years ago, she made the observation that she would welcome a day when the top seats in the arena were just as “desirable” as those closer to the court.
We may not be there yet, since those who sit at court level in the Dome do live the suite life. But the sight lines up top are good, while the seats strike a balance between creating intimacy and providing sufficient leg room (as well as power at each seat for charging devices, a true 21st-century issue). And, the bonus: The Halo board has T-shirt cannons aimed toward the top sections of the building.
“When people come in and they see the value that they get for that seat price, it’s pretty tremendous,” Zucker said.
Longtime Clippers season-ticket holder Ira Waldman, whose seats are closer to the floor in the Patron Tequila club section – in a corner across from The Wall – made an interesting comparison. “Once you get in, it is like a palace compared to Staples Center (will never call it by that other name),” he wrote in an email response. “It is more like the Sports Arena where everyone was close to the action, although way way more comfortable. The sight lines are perfect.”
And, he added, the issues with elevated noise levels that exist in the downtown arena aren’t a problem in the Dome. “We were still very nervous about the noise level and bought special ear plugs for the experience,” he wrote. “Yet – we have never had to use them.”
There are some things to be aware of. The Dome uses the GameFace facial recognition program. Tickets are only stored on the arena app, and Waldman said there have been glitches in the process of transferring tickets. The arena is also totally cashless and cardless; to pay for food or merchandise you either use the arena’s app – into which you would have previously downloaded payment information – or GameFace.
Some bugs are still being worked out, and others might require more effort to solve. Reports are that getting in and out of the parking garages can be time consuming in itself, and the $70 single-game charge is jaw dropping, as well as another endorsement for a more convenient link to mass transit.
The Clippers list the building’s capacity for basketball at 18,000. They’ve topped 17,000 only four times (two for games against the Warriors), and their home attendance of 278,616 (16,389 per game) is 15th in the 30-team league.
But it’s a fact of life in sports: The better the team plays, the bigger the crowds. And the advantages to the Clippers of having a home of their own, rather than sharing a space – and not having much say about preferred home dates – might manifest themselves as this season goes on.
“I mean, it’s our home, you know?” Clippers guard Norman Powell said. “We’re looking up and seeing everything Clippers. We’re not seeing Kings or Lakers or anything like that, having to go into different hallways or whatever it is. Everything is us. So it’s a feeling of comfort. … It feels good just to have your own dedicated arena and practice facility.”
And there will be no more of those noon or 12:30 p.m. starts, the result of trying to wedge three teams’ schedules into one arena. That’s a plus, too.
jalexander@scng.com
