LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) — The brand new Banc of California Stadium welcomed its first live music event Saturday when it hosted iHeartRadio’s Wango Tango festival, headlined by Shawn Mendes and Ariana Grande.
While the stadium, which serves as the home field for the Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC), has already been hosting sports events since it opened its doors in April, Saturday’s concert was the first of what the stadium’s owners hope to be many such events.
The 23,500-seat, $350 million stadium is located on the former site of the L.A. Memorial Sports Arena, adjacent to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the campus of the University of Southern California.
During a recent press walkthrough of the stadium, Adam Friedman, formerly the head of Nederlander Entertainment who now serves as president of the newly-created Banc of California Stadium Entertainment Division, tread a careful line, taking pains to note that the stadium was “promoter-agnostic.”
“We are going to be very aggressive in the marketplace, to try to do a good job and secure as many of those shows we can,” Friedmam was quoted by Variety. “But we play nicely in the sandbox. We want our promotion friends to be successful in other venues as well. We want this venue to be accessible to everyone.”
Friedman went on to note the venue’s design qualities, which lend an arena-like intimacy to the open air stadium.
“What both ownership and designers wanted was to create a stadium with arena-like qualities,” Friedman said, per Variety. “That basically encapsulates what this facility is about. There is not a bad seat in the house, and not too many venues can say that.”
