Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum - History - Notable Events - 1990s-2000s

1990s-2000s

The Coliseum was set to be the site of WrestleMania VII on March 24, 1991. However, the event was eventually moved to the nearby Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Officially, World Wrestling Entertainment claims the decision to move the event was due to security concerns, however, that claim has been disputed and attributed to low ticket sales.

On December 27, 1991 Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam performed a sold-out concert at the Coliseum.

Metallica and Guns N' Roses brought the Guns N' Roses/Metallica Stadium Tour to the coliseum on September 27, 1992, with Motörhead as their opening act.

In 1995, the Raiders left Los Angeles and returned to Oakland, leaving the Coliseum without a professional football tenant for the first time since the close of World War II.

The most recent pro football tenant has been the short-lived Los Angeles Xtreme, the first and only champion of the XFL. It won the championship game at the Coliseum over San Francisco.

The stadium hosted several matches, including the semi-finals and final, of the 1991 CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer tournament. The United States national team beat Honduras in the final. The Coliseum also staged the final match of the Gold Cup in the 1996, 1998, and 2000 tournaments.

The stadium hosted the K-1 Dynamite!! USA mixed martial arts event. The promoters claimed that 54,000 people attended the event, which would have set a new attendance record for a mixed martial arts event in the United States, however other officials estimated the crowd between 20,000 and 30,000.

In May 1959, the Dodgers had hosted an exhibition game against the reigning World Series champion New York Yankees at the Coliseum, a game which drew over 93,000 people. The Yankees won that game 6-2. As part of their west coast 50th anniversary celebration in 2008, the Dodgers again hosted an exhibition game against the reigning World Series Champions, the Boston Red Sox. The middle game of a three-game set in Los Angeles, held on March 29, 2008, was also won by the visitors, by the relatively low score of 7-4, given the layout of the field - Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek had joked that he expected scores in the 80s.

As previously mentioned in the 1950s-1960s section, during 1958-1961, the distance from home plate to the left field foul pole was 251 feet (76.5 m) with a 42-foot (13 m) screen running across the close part of left field. Due to the intervening addition of another section of seating rimming the field, the 2008 grounds crew had much less space to work with, and the result was a left field foul line only 201 ft long (61.3 m), with a 60-foot (18 m) screen, which one Boston writer dubbed the "Screen Monster". Even at that distance, 201 feet is also 49 ft (14.9 m) short of the minimum legal home-run distance. This being an exhibition game, balls hit over the 60 ft (18 m) temporary screen were still counted as home runs. There were only a couple of homers over the screen, as pitchers adjusted (and Manny Ramirez did not play, although he ironically enough, would later be traded to the Dodgers that season). A diagram illustrated the differences in the dimensions between 1959 and 2008:

2008 - LF 201 ft (61.3 m) - LCF 280 ft (85.3 m) - CF 380 ft (115.8 m) - RCF 352 ft (107.3 m) - RF 300 ft (91.4 m)

1959 - LF 251 ft (76.5 m) - LCF 320 ft (97.5 m) - CF 417 ft (127.1 m) - RCF 375 ft (114.3 m) - RF 300 ft (91.4 m)

A sellout crowd of 115,300 was announced, which set a Guinness World Record for attendance at a baseball game, breaking the record set at a 1956 Summer Olympics baseball demonstration game between teams from the USA and Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Beginning in June 2007, Insomniac Events began hosting their annual Electronic Dance Music Festival, known as Electric Daisy Carnival, on the Coliseum grounds, also using nearby Exposition Park. 2007's show brought in over 30,000 attendees and 2008's event brought in nearly 75,000 attendees. In 2009 it was expanded to a two-day event, the first day brought in 45,000 attendees, and the second night featured 95,000, with some estimating that the attendance was actually above 100,000. It is currently the biggest electronic dance music festival outside Europe.

In 2006 the Coliseum Commission focused on signing a long-term lease with USC; the school offered to purchase the facility from the state but was turned down. After some at-time contentious negotiations, with the university threatening in late 2007 to move its home stadium to the Rose Bowl, the two sides signed a 25-year lease in May 2008 giving the Coliseum Commission 8% of USC's ticket sales, approximately $1.5 million a year, but commits the agency to a list of renovations.

On June 23, 2008, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission announced they are putting the naming rights of the Coliseum on the market, predicting a deal valued at $6 million to $8 million a year. The funds would go towards financing more than $100 million in renovations over the next decade, including a new video board, bathrooms, concession areas and locker rooms. Additional seating was included in the renovation plans which increased the Coliseum's seating capacity to 93,607 in September 2008.

On June 17, 2009, the Coliseum was the terminus for the Los Angeles Lakers 2009 NBA Championship victory parade. A crowd of over 90,000 attended the festivities, in addition to the throngs of supporters who lined the 2-mile parade route. The Coliseum peristyle was redesigned in purple and gold regalia to commemorate the team and the Lakers' court was transported from Staples Center to the Coliseum field to act as the stage. Past parades had ended at Staples Center, but due to the newly-constructed L.A. Live complex, space was limited around the arena.

On July 30, 2011, the LA Rising festival with Rage Against The Machine, Muse, Rise Against, Lauryn Hill, Immortal Technique, and El Gran Silencio was hosted at the Coliseum.