Picture yourself as a diehard fan of the Los Angeles Chargers for a moment.
Say you’ve got nieces and nephews in town who might get a kick out of watching training camp or weekly practice over lunch.
Or perhaps you retain remote working privileges and for a change of scenery, you’d rather work in an exclusive lounge with like-minded fans.
Or instead, you’d like some quiet time and would benefit from having a drink outside while watching planes come and go from LAX.
Well, you’ll soon be in luck. At The Bolt – the shiny new El Segundo headquarters for the NFL’s Chargers, who spent about $250 million on the facility – high-roller fans will soon have the option to enroll in the facility’s members-only club, where they can come and go as they please for any of the above reasons.
“It’s not just a club,” said Fred Maas, chief of staff for the Chargers organization. “You can come watch practice. You can come in the morning and get some work done. We’ve had half a dozen wedding and bar mitzvah requests already.”
Getting ready for the next season
The yet-to-be-named club remains on track to be up and running for the 2025-26 NFL season, when the Bolt will host training camp and then the weekly practices once the season begins. Situated directly above the team’s weight room, the wraparound balcony allows a spanning view of the three full-size fields utilized by the team.
Inside, a classy lounge space is currently furnished with a wide variety of sofas with coffee tables, along with high-top tables and chairs, although team officials stressed they are still scheming out the final configuration. A large bar is installed already, with shelves showcasing historical team memorabilia festooned above the bar top. A private dining room is tucked into one corner, and once open, club members will enjoy a menu prepared by Wolfgang Puck’s catering company.
Maas, in envisioning this club, said he took inspiration from the Cowboys Club at The Star in Frisco, which serves fans of the Dallas Cowboys.
“I was intrigued with what they were up to. We saw that as a seed to be planted here,” Maas said. “I come from the golf business, so membership clubs are something that I understand.
“We never envisioned this to be a traditional two-story building where we had our offices and weight room,” he added.
Maas said he was confident the fandom was there to fill out numbers for the club. About 30% of the single-game ticket sales for two of the final regular season home games went to fans with San Diego- or Inland Empire-area ZIP codes. And longtime Stadium Seat License – that is, non-recurring deposits ahead of SoFi’s construction, which allows fans exclusive seat rights and other perks to go with their season ticket purchases – holders will be among the first targets for recruiting.
“We’ve maintained and continued to have a robust fanbase. It’s been great to watch them come back,” Maas said. “That becomes the platform on which you build a membership base at a club.”
A developing experience
Expansive clubs are coming back in style for Los Angeles.
One relatively comparable example is Cosm, a high-tech venue located in the Hollywood Park complex in Inglewood, adjacent to where the Chargers play home games at SoFi Stadium. The 65,000-square-foot space aims to create augmented and virtual reality experiences for its up-to 1,700 patrons. It achieves this with an 80-foot dome with sofa seating and a wraparound screen, and also with 150-foot-long LED screen in the lounge area.
Since it opened in June, Cosm has hosted fans for World Cup games, Olympics events and the current NFL season. Though it is not an exclusive club, its amenities and pricing tiers make it a new luxury sports experience for Angelenos.
The Playa Vista-based company plans to open additional venues in Texas and Georgia.
“(We’re) leaning into the human experience of being together, of the community aspect of fandom,” Cosm Chief Executive Jeb Terry previously told the Business Journal.
That community aspect certainly fueled the Chargers’ decision to plant roots the way they did after relocating to L.A. in 2017. And the organization was focused on the South Bay as a future home as it searched for a location to build its 150,000-square-foot headquarters.
“We always were focused on the South Bay as an opportunity for us,” Maas said. “The challenge is finding the appropriate land deal that makes sense. Finding six acres of non-income producing real estate is a challenge all over L.A., not just the South Bay.”
Ground broke in 2022 and was completed in time for the facility to open and for employees to begin migrating in July. Just minutes from Los Angeles International Airport and SoFi Stadium, the facility includes views of the downtown skyline, the Hollywood Sign and the Griffith Observatory in its sightlines on clear days. Passengers riding the Los Angeles Metro K Line will get an elevated view of the practice field as the rail traverses the easterly side of the facility.
Employees – and soon club members – will cross a walk of fame, walk past a three-story screen in the lobby and view a mannequin lineup of historical Chargers jerseys.
“We tried to make a statement about who this team is, from the lobby to the walk of fame to the weight room to our training and performance facilities clear up to the business offices,” Maas said. “I think we’ve embodied more than being a traditional building. Sometimes a building is just a building and sometimes it’s a lot more.”
The Bolt won’t be the only large-scale sports-oriented club-like experience in El Segundo, although other operations might be a bit more hands-on. Topgolf opened nearby to the Bolt in 2022. Meanwhile, California Smash Pickleball and Social Club is also currently under development in the city and promises an array of perks in addition to providing the courts for pickleball enthusiasts.
