How will Intuit Dome in Inglewood stand out among L.A. music venues?

When concertgoers enter Inglewood’s Intuit Dome for the first time next week, they’ll find a massive high-def video screen dubbed the Halo Board, food options including a vegan cauliflower wrap and a spicy tuna sushi dog and a ritzy, red-ceilinged VIP lounge designed by the same decorator who helped create West Hollywood’s members-only San Vicente Bungalows.

Or at least they will if the venue succeeds in getting people through the doors.

Built by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer to house his basketball team after years of sharing downtown’s Crypto.com Arena with the Lakers, the $2-billion Intuit Dome is set to welcome an audience for the first time on Aug. 15 with a two-night stand by pop-soul hitmaker Bruno Mars. Other top acts including Usher, Olivia Rodrigo and Billy Joel are scheduled to perform at Intuit through the end of the year.

Yet the building’s opening adds a fourth arena to a crowded live-music market in Los Angeles that already includes Crypto, the Kia Forum and the arena-sized Hollywood Bowl — and does so at a moment of creeping anxiety regarding the health of the touring business, which after a booming post-pandemic comeback has begun to show signs of a slowdown.

So as Intuit gets rolling with concerts between Clippers games — the team’s NBA season will start in October — the question is: Can the L.A. area support another venue with room for more than 17,000 fans?

After COVID, the free-spending rush to return to live shows — particularly to blockbuster stadium tours by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé — marked a historic high point in live music. In its 2024 mid-year report that includes stats from the top 100 tours, though, the trade journal Pollstar wrote, “For the first time in 2½ years, the live industry has returned to earth.” So far in 2024, ticket sales are down almost 15% from 2023 (though ticket prices are up 9.4%).

Brian Bell, left, and Rivers Cuomo of Weezer perform at Railbird Music Festival on Saturday, June 3, 2023, at The Infield at Red Mile in Lexington, Ky. Weezer is among the first acts to play Intuit Dome when it opens this month

(Amy Harris / AP)

Tours by stars such as Madonna and Bad Bunny have performed well, and Pollstar believes the figures “reflect more of a correction than a catastrophic decline.” But the numbers suggest that Intuit Dome is arriving in a different environment than the gangbusters market of the last few years.

“We’ve seen some leveling off,” said Pollstar’s executive editor, Andy Gensler. “Attendance is a little lower, but there are more shows at higher prices. There’s been anecdotal evidence of some softening, but it was coming off record highs. That record-setting pandemic euphoria has come down a bit.”

Among the anecdotal evidence: tours canceled by the Black Keys and Jennifer Lopez and dramatically slashed prices to see acts like Zach Bryan, Justin Timberlake and Vampire Weekend in certain secondary markets. Most recently, The Fugees called off a long-awaited North American reunion tour, including a September Hollywood Bowl date, citing low ticket sales. Singer Ms. Lauryn Hill said in a statement that “Regrettably, some media outlets’ penchant for sensationalism and clickbait headlines have seemingly created a narrative that has affected ticket sales for the North American portion of the tour.”

Yet Becky Colwell, who oversees concert booking at Intuit Dome and the nearby Forum, said she hasn’t seen that softening firsthand in L.A. Gensler agreed: “It feels like L.A. has a pretty elastic market,” he said. “It’s crowded for venues of this size, but it’s a huge metro area with demand for live events. Look at what shows are coming up at Intuit — it’s a full schedule even without basketball. I think there’s still plenty of room for it.”

Future, a rapper, producer and songwriter, will perform with Metro Boomin Aug. 31

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones/Los Angeles Times)

Having control of two marquee arenas just a mile from each other means the building’s operators can get creative for longer residencies like Rodrigo’s, which will span six shows at the Forum and Intuit this month.

“We were finding at times that we were turning away shows we wanted because so much of this revolves around scheduling,” said Gillian Zucker, CEO of Halo Sports & Entertainment. “Looking at the opening couple of weeks, look at the number of dates that we have overlapped where we have events going on in both buildings. We believe there is plenty of inventory to go around.”

Music-industry insiders are split on the question. One manager whose clients have played L.A.’s arenas for years (and who agreed to speak anonymously in order to be frank) said they look forward to having another option to play in town, while a second said that all the competition would make it difficult for Intuit to thrive on a consistent basis. And yet, this person added with a laugh, “I can’t wait to check out the venue. I hear it’s spectacular.”

Indeed, Intuit’s pitch is that the arena promises such a satisfying user experience that it will create its own demand.

“We have a lot of special sauces,” Zucker said.

A drone image showing The Intuit Dome.

(LA Clippers)

Among them are food and drink offerings to be prepared in the building’s 31 kitchens and a layout meant to enable a guest to grab a beer and hit the restroom while returning to their seat in two minutes or less. Zucker also points to the venue’s many high-tech touches, including power at every seat and interactive armrests that will allow fans to play trivia games on the Halo Board.

Customers at ease with the privacy concerns related to facial-recognition software can even opt in to a contactless payment program that would allow them to waltz out of a concession stand without stopping to hand over a credit card.

The user-friendliness extends beyond audience members to the acts coming to play Intuit, according to Zucker, who said that as organizers made plans for Intuit Dome they talked to “literally thousands of people” in the live-music business about their experiences in other buildings.

“We’d say, ‘What were the pain points and what were the luxuries?’ ” she said.

In response, they designed a loading dock with half a dozen truck bays to facilitate the growing size of pop tours; they also tricked out dressing rooms with bespoke decor and lighting schemes that can be contoured to a person’s circadian rhythms.

“We wanted to make this feel like a place that people would want to come and stay,” said Zucker, who added that the number of dressing rooms in the arena might also make Intuit a destination for awards shows in the future.

It’s all part of a push to make the small city of Inglewood the heart of live sports and entertainment on the West Coast. Intuit Dome sits just minutes down Prairie Avenue from the Kia Forum, which Ballmer bought for $400 million in 2020 from New York’s Madison Square Garden Co. That venue is next door to the $5-billion SoFi Stadium, which hosted the Super Bowl in 2022 and will be a centerpiece for the Olympics in 2028.

These venues have already had an impact on housing affordability in Inglewood, where rents and home prices have skyrocketed since the announcement of the Rams’ move to L.A. from St. Louis in 2016.

In 2024, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Inglewood is $1,875, up from $1,100 eight years ago, according to rental site Zumper. The average home price in Inglewood was nearly $770,000, up from around $402,000 in 2016, according to Zillow.

In 2018, the community activist group Uplift Inglewood Coalition sued the city, claiming Inglewood had violated state affordable housing laws when it approved Intuit Dome’s construction on public land. The group eventually lost the suit. Yet Derek Steele, executive director of the Social Justice Learning Institute and a member of Uplift Inglewood Coalition, said the organization was able to win substantial concessions from the city (including a rent stabilization ordinance) and the team, which promised a $100-million package of funds and community benefits.

“We didn’t wait to see what would happen — we got proactive about organizing to make sure people benefited,” Steele said. “Former community members have been displaced. How do we find a place for them? How do we support the homeless population? How do we make sure those resources contribute to affordable housing?”

Steele cited Sankofa Place at Centinela, a new Inglewood affordable housing complex with 120 units for low-income and formerly homeless tenants, as one beneficiary of the team’s funds.

“We didn’t lay down and just let this happen,” said Greg Bonett, an attorney with Public Counsel who helped lead the lawsuit. “We weren’t going to just let the powers that be come into the city and dictate the future.”

Inglewood, CA – April 17: Construction workers walk outside by a promotion for Bruno Mars performance at Intuit Dome on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 in Inglewood, CA.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

“This was an important fight,” Steele said. “It yielded a chance for us to ensure that people in this city have the ability to be part of all this. The Clippers had to show they wanted to be part of the fabric of the community, and they came through.”

Beyond housing concerns, traffic will be undoubtedly be an issue for Intuit Dome, not least on evenings when events are taking place there and at SoFi and the Forum — bringing approximately 100,000 fans into a city of 100,000. None of the venues have a direct rail link to Metro.

“We’ve made some dramatic investments in traffic and parking technology for the city,” Zucker said, pointing to a coordinated traffic light system that she said would’ve been difficult for Inglewood to afford on its own. Colwell adds that Intuit boasts twice the number of parking spots that the Forum has and notes that more than 2,000 people took advantage of a shuttle program in place for a recent Billie Eilish performance at the Forum.

Locals are trying to see the driving conundrum on balance with everything else. “Is there going to be traffic? I’m not going to act like that’s not the case,” Steele said with a laugh. “Public transit has doubled down in our area, but we’ll be resilient even if we’re a little frustrated, because we’ll all see benefits.”

Gensler advised finding some zen on the way out of an otherwise great show.

“When you live in L.A., you know traffic is our obsession, and it’s never easy,” he said. “Hopefully, the experience of live music transcends the parking inconvenience. It’s problematic, but it’s the price we pay.”