Inglewood’s billboard battles: Letters reveal fraying relationship between SoFi, mayor

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The friendship that developed between billionaire Stan Kroenke and Inglewood Mayor James Butts helped bring the NFL back to Los Angeles and spark the construction of venues now scheduled to host some of the world’s most-watched events — at least, that’s how the mayor has often told the story. 

But in July 2025, a company that operates Inglewood’s 300-acre Hollywood Park development — home to SoFi Stadium and owned by Kroenke — sued the city of Inglewood, trying to stop the installation of more than 100 digital billboards near the stadium and several other event venues.

“Dear Stan,” Butts responded in a letter, telling the largest landowner in America he was “greatly surprised” by having been recently served.

“I would have expected a call from you personally and not just a lawyer’s letter and a lawsuit,” Butts wrote.

Peppered among repeated requests to sit down man-to-man and work it out, Butts wrote that he would do whatever it takes to fight Kroenke’s legal challenges to the city’s billboard program.

Butts would later make a bombshell argument: that the very contract the stadium was built on was void.

Kroenke isn’t the only billionaire Butts has been legally feuding with. A business owned by Steve Ballmer, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and the Intuit Dome, has also sued to stop the city from moving forward with its billboard network.

At the heart of each case is a looming conflict over advertising territory — who gets to control what millions of gamegoers see and who gets to cash checks from brands eager to hawk their products to people attending the upcoming World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympics. 

The legal flexing between Butts and the billionaires — recounted in court filings and interviews by The LA Local — threatens to go beyond billboard advertising and undo the public-private partnerships that built one of the nation’s premier stadium and venue hubs. As the conflict grows, so do the hazards to the city’s financial prospects, its residents’ quality of life and Butts’ campaign for a fifth term as mayor. 

Butts declined to comment for this story after being contacted multiple times. John Quinn, a lawyer for Hollywood Park, told The LA Local that the claims made by the mayor and his administration raise fundamental questions about whether the city is a reliable place to do business.

“That kind of uncertainty doesn’t just affect this project, it makes it harder for anyone to trust long-term agreements with the city, which could deter future investment and limit opportunities for residents,” Quinn said.

The billboard battles ignite

Inglewood’s bet on building and redeveloping stadiums and event venues in the wake of the Great Recession was a gamble from the start. Research shows that city investments in sports stadiums often don’t pay in the ways city leaders hope.

When Butts was elected mayor, he inherited a city with considerable financial challenges. Still, he led an effort in 2012 to use $18 million in city funds to help renovate what is now the Kia Forum. In 2015, the City Council voted unanimously to approve the construction of what would become SoFi Stadium. Development after development followed.

In some ways, Butts’ bet paid off. The teams and their fans flocked to the city. SoFi Stadium is home to two NFL franchises, one of which won the Super Bowl there in 2022. The Clippers launched their first season at the newly built Intuit Dome in late 2024. By 2025, SoFi Stadium announced that 10 million people had attended events there since its opening. 

And more fans are expected for the major international sporting events on the horizon. About 5 million people registered to purchase tickets to the 2028 Olympics, and the LA Sports and Entertainment Commission forecasts the World Cup could inject about $17 million into Inglewood’s economy.

The city is paid a portion of ticket admissions and parking revenue from all venues, and is in a far better financial position than it was before the stadium boom. Its unemployment rate is about 6%, according to the California Employment Development Department, down from nearly 16% when Butts was first elected. The city’s budget shows it received about $19 million in revenue related to venue admissions and $7.7 million related to parking in fiscal year 2024-25.

But the success of SoFi alone is beginning to come at a cost. According to the contract between the city and Hollywood Park, once the city receives $25 million in tax revenue from the development in any given year, it has to pay several businesses owned by Kroenke back for various improvements made to the city during construction.

A spokesperson for Hollywood Park’s legal team said that the city had surpassed $25 million in annual revenue by 2022.

The stadium operating company claims the city owes it about $376 million.

It hasn’t always been clear to residents that the money the city makes outweighs the costs they pay. Inglewood’s business corridor has continued to struggle. Despite public outcry, water and sewer rates increased last year. Nearly every weekend, parking and traffic problems reach severe levels as the city hosts various events.

In April 2025, the Inglewood City Council quietly launched its own project to independently capitalize on eventgoers by advertising to them. It awarded a 20-year contract, which can be extended for decades, giving WOW Media, a Los Angeles advertising firm, exclusive rights to expand a series of billboards near the Inglewood stadiums. 

Butts pitched the project as a transportation information network that could be used to alert the public to critical safety information, according to City Council filings.

Digital billboards in Inglewood on Saturday.

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Dania Maxwell

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The LA Local

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Digital billboards in Inglewood on Saturday.

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Dania Maxwell

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The LA Local

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Digital billboards in Inglewood on Saturday.

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Dania Maxwell

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The LA Local

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The WOW Media contract involves constructing digital billboards in medians and near sidewalks of public streets. In total, the network could include what the city described as 60 digital signs and 108 digital screens. WOW Media would pay about 40% of the ad revenue to the city as “rent,” according to the contract.

WOW did not respond to a request for comment to this story.

The city’s billboard project took the stadium businesses completely by surprise, as they manage their own digital advertising operations on their properties. 

Businesses tied to Kroenke and Hollywood Park sued the city last July, saying the billboards threaten their own advertising business and undermine the branding of the teams and events hosted there. Those linked to Ballmer, the Intuit Dome and the Kia Forum followed with nearly identical claims. The two share the same law firm for the suits. 

Businesses and lawyers connected to Ballmer’s suits did not respond to The LA Local’s inquiries.

But the companies claim that the city launched its billboard campaign out of sight of the public and the owners of the stadiums. The city did not open the project up to bids from other advertising companies and did not hold a public hearing before the vote. The City Council approved the motion in April, and the companies said in court filings they did not learn about the project until late May.

In suits that attracted national and local media coverage, the companies argue that the city’s plan violates its own policies barring billboards in the public right-of-way and that the city approved the permits for construction of the billboards the month before the contract was voted on. 

They also said that the city’s billboard project “pulled the rug out” from under contracts establishing the standards the parties agreed to maintain to operate the stadiums and the millions they make each year.

Butts claims SoFi deal is void 

Screenshot from ‘Mission Inglewood- State of The City’ short film.

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via Youtube: City of Inglewood account

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Butts has long said he should be credited with saving the city from bankruptcy by spearheading venue development when he took office in 2011. In fact, the city of Inglewood released a video on YouTube in 2024 in the style of an action film showing him manning a war room, where he is briefed on the dire straits the city faced at the beginning of his tenure. 

Much like in the video, with characteristic confidence, Butts has repeatedly said he prevailed in the city’s seemingly impossible mission to once again earn it the nickname “City of Champions.”

Butts said the pending litigation prevented him from commenting, and he did not respond to questions about what consequence his legal claims could have on the city.

He previously told The LA Local that he inherited a City Council in dysfunction and reshaped it into one that attracted investment from business developers. Those same business benefits have come at a cost to public participation in local government. 

An LA Local investigation found that the Inglewood City Council rarely holds public hearings, rarely hears from the public after moving meeting times from the evening to regular business hours, and almost always votes yes unanimously on the motions it puts on its agenda. Council meetings have averaged about 30 minutes over the past two years.

In fact, the public never directly voted to approve the Hollywood Park development that became SoFi Stadium. Instead, a ballot initiative was used to add the stadium to already existing plans for the site after more than 20,000 signatures were collected. 

Among the crowning achievements of Butts’ business-friendly governing style, the City Council approved the SoFi initiative in a unanimous vote in 2015. But with the billboard legal battles intensifying, Butts dropped a bomb on the city’s deal with the profitable stadium and its related businesses.

The contract the city had agreed to with Hollywood Park to build SoFi a decade earlier was no longer valid, Butts wrote to Kroenke in July. The city would need to be reimbursed for a $20 million payment it had recently made, and Kroenke could expect no future payments on the millions they owed for infrastructure improvements under the 2015 contract, according to the letter he sent. 

Butts wrote that the city’s lawyers found the contract was void while reviewing claims Kroenke and Ballmer had made in their billboard lawsuits. A court had ruled in an unrelated case — after the Hollywood Park contract was signed — that such developments could not be approved by a signature-collecting initiative, as Inglewood had done. Butts claimed the ruling also applies to Inglewood. The LA Local found no evidence that the case has voided any other development agreement. 

“I’m surprised that your legal counsel did not advise you of the implications of that case prior to filing,” Butts wrote. 

The void contract was “very serious” he added. “Aside from the construction that has already been completed on the property, there are ongoing obligations that extend for many years and involve hundreds of millions of dollars.”

And it appears Kroenke did not directly write Butts back.

Butts wrote in August 2025 to another stadium representative, Otto Maly, that he remained interested in meeting directly with Kroenke to discuss the billboards and the purportedly void development agreement.

In it, Butts, a former police officer who later served as police chief, said city officials could be jailed for making the $20 million payment: “California Penal Code section 424 makes it a crime, punishable by incarceration, to transfer funds without legal authority.”

While he declined to comment about the claim, Butts appears to be attempting to trigger negotiations for a new development agreement. 

Months after the letter, a company owned by Kroenke sued Inglewood again to dispute its attempt to claw back the $20 million payment and reaffirm the validity of their 25-year agreement. The case remains unresolved.

After being paid millions annually for the past decade, the stadium’s lawyers wrote, “the city is repudiating all of that, in a brazen, cynical effort to avoid making the payments it promised to make, for rich benefits it has already received.”

“The potential impact here is broader than this dispute, and the risk ultimately falls on residents as it could affect job creation, business growth, and the city’s ability to sustain long-term economic momentum,” Quinn, the lawyer representing Hollywood Park for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, told The LA Local.

Butts appears confident he can work through the conflict and the risks it poses to the city’s finances and his political future. Having recently announced a run for his fifth term as mayor, he is not acting as if he could be arrested for the city’s $20 million payment on what he claims is an illegitimate contract. 

“I’m certain we will work things out as we have in the past,” Butts wrote to Kroenke last August.