The owner of the Los Angeles Rams has filed a lawsuit against the City of Inglewood, California, for planning to allow digital billboards to go up near SoFi Stadium, claiming it would create “ambush marketing” around his $5.5 billion complex.
Last April, Inglewood approved a contract with WOW Media to install as many as 60 digital billboards around Hollywood Park, where SoFi Stadium is based. According to Insurance Journal, the lawsuit by Rams owner Stan Kroenke insists that deal violates terms of his 2015 development agreement that prohibits billboards near his property, adding it would divert revenue from the private-financed Hollywood Park while taking advantage of traffic to his venues.
In addition to being the Rams’ home venue, SoFi Stadium is also hosting this year’s World Cup games, next year’s Super Bowl, and events for the 2028 Olympics.
City officials counterclaimed that Kroenke, who has a net worth of nearly $27 billion, was being greedy, adding the billboards have yet to be erected while claiming there should be no restrictions on advertising outside of the Hollywood Park complex.
“We have every right to use public land for what we want to do,” Inglewood Mayor James Butts said in an interview. “I don’t see any legal arguments that would give them control over what we do on city land.”
Photo by Troutfarm27 / Wikimedia Commons
I live in a county where billboards are prohibited. They are distraction to drivers and an eyesore, a blight on the land. We are so inundated with advertising everywhere we look that more ads are not the answer. When the writers of the constitution/bill of rights guaranteed free speech, this is not what they meant. It was to allow us to protest the actions of suppressing governments and others, not to sell cheap goods on giant flashing and distracting billboards. The county that wants the billboards around the stadium is only looking for another revenue source. Isn’t it always about the money?