SoFi Stadium has been turned over to the World Cup, with a temporary grass field laid down and FIFA-mandated sponsor cover-ups hiding everything from the towering SoFi signs to references on a concourse map. The NFL home of the Rams and Chargers will host eight World Cup matches in Los Angeles, giving the venue a tournament role it does not normally play.
The transformation matters now because the Los Angeles World Cup kickoff has already started pulling people in before kickoff, and the crowds have been hard to miss. Fans lined up more than five hours early for the U.S. men’s national team’s opening match against Paraguay, more than 70,000 filed out after Team USA’s 4-1 victory, and a near-capacity crowd returned three days later for Iran vs. New Zealand, which ended 2-2.
Kevin Demoff said the point was always to use Los Angeles Stadium to show off the city and the region. He recalled being at the 1994 World Cup as a teenager at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where the U.S. played Romania in 100-degree weather, and joked that he had once wished for a shaded, lovely stadium on the west side of Los Angeles so no one would have to sit in that kind of heat in 2026. This time, he said, the aim was to kick off the World Cup in style.
That ambition ran into the practical reality of using a stadium shared by two NFL teams. Otto Benedict said grass is ordinarily impossible to maintain there, which is why the field had to be installed just for the tournament and why so much of the usual branding had to disappear. The result is a venue that can be presented as world-class for football, but only after a temporary conversion that strips out the stadium’s regular identity.
Darren Bazeley said the setup delivered on the promise anyway. After the 2-2 draw with Iran, he called the facilities amazing and said it was the best football stadium he had ever been in, adding that the atmosphere felt almost like a carnival. The next question is how long that temporary field stays in place as SoFi Stadium keeps working through its eight-match schedule, because the tournament’s showcase venue is still, underneath it all, an NFL building built for another game.
