Intuit Dome Books Bruno Mars for Two-Night Grand Opening, as Venue Looks to Stand Out Amid L.A. Concert Arena Scene

Chris Willman

With the Los Angeles area’s still-under-construction Intuit Dome set to start hosting the Clippers in October, a lot of attention has been trained on what kind of reviews the 17,700-capacity arena will get as a sports venue this fall. But music fans will get a big jump on feeling the new facility out, as pop superstar Bruno Mars was announced Friday morning as the attraction for the dome’s grand opening, with back-to-back concerts set for Aug. 15-16.

Tickets for the Mars shows go on sale next Thursday at 10 a.m. PT through Ticketmaster.

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Gillian Zucker, the Clippers president of business operations, says that Mars ticked off every box in what they wanted in an opener — including someone who hasn’t been overexposed in the market, so the shows won’t feel like business-as-usual in any way. Mars hasn’t played Los Angeles since 2018, with his focus having stayed on his longrunning Las Vegas residency and overseas dates.

“We had a list of criteria that we came up with that we thought, if you can have anybody, what would you want?” Zucker tells Variety. “And at the top of the list was: global icon with a local connection. So that was really important to us. Bruno moved to Inglewood as a teenager, and so he has a connection with the community, which we thought was very important.

“We wanted also a performer who was a showperson, someone who would really effectively help us bring the building to life. And there’s so many unique things about the building — the halo scoreboard, the interactivity with the crowd, our LED lights that are built into the seats, the various different things that just haven’t existed in other buildings before — and we wanted to make sure that we had a performer who would take advantage of all of those things. And I think lastly, we wanted something special — someone who wasn’t necessarily out on tour, doing something that would be iconic and unique and worthy of all of the love and attention and care that’s been put into this building. Another piece of it that really resonated with us was that in the conversations, he immediately took to the idea and was excited about the prospect of being a part of it.”

Other performers are into it, too, even if they won’t be opening the building. Prior to announcing going to Mars for the opening, Intuit Dome has already put shows on sale by Usher (for four nights), Billy Joel (keeping it to a one-nighter) and Twenty One Pilots.

“I would estimate we’ll end up with 20 to 25 shows just in the couple of months between August 15 and when the Clippers start playing in October. So there’s gonna be a lot of music in the building,” Zucker says. It won’t end when the Clippers start, as musicians will still be able to make use of the arena during the Clippers’ away-game stretches.

Variety took a hardhat tour of the Inglewood site last weekend, and can speak to the fact that there’ll be a lot of depth to Mars’ performance. The Intuit Dome has three floors that extend below ground level, and four above — similar to the nearby SoFi Stadium — due to being in the flight path of LAX, where a cap is put on building heights. A peek from the back row suggests that the arena may live up to the sense of increased “intimacy” that reps have been promising, belying its size. (One tout on the new arena is that the average seat is about 45 feet closer to the stage or court than Crypto.com Arena, which it’ll be in competition with for bookings, thanks to the serious rake of the seats.)

The audio capabilities were designed by the same team that did the re-do of the Forum as a. concert-only facility. But sometimes it’s the little things — as in 18,000 or so tiny points of light — that set a facility apart.

“You know the LED wristbands that a lot of especially pop and EDM performers tend to utilize in their shows? We did something very unique with the building. We had an opportunity very early on to make a decision to run power to every single seat in the building. Then there’s a lot of other things that you can do along with it, other than just having a space to charge your phone, which you can do at every seat. But so long as we had powered the seats, we thought, why don’t we put an LED in the armrest of every single seat? And so it gives all of these musicians the opportunity to be able to build that LED accent into their shows, which we know will create a great experience.”

Zucker also oversees the practically adjacent Forum, which Steve Ballmer bought when he deigned to bring the Clippers to Inglewood. Are there enough bookings to go around between Intuit Dome, the Forum and Crypto.com downtown?

“Everybody’s touring, so there’s a lot of inventory, and when we did our due diligence actually before we built it,” Zucker says, “we’ve always felt like this market is under-resourced in terms of arena spaces. There’s just a lot of demand for music in Los Angeles.”

Intuit Dome and the Forum would obviously be in fierce competition coming up, if Ballmer didn’t own them both. How will the bookings pan out — will artists prefer the shiny new thing to play with, or the familiarity of the refurbished?

“You know, we’re seeing like a real balance, and we’ve been booking both buildings now for four or five months,” Zucker says.  “Obviously the number one priority with everybody is their routing schedules, so they’re looking for dates first. But when you have dates in both buildings, oftentimes we’ll hold both. And we’re seeing some shows who are very partial to the Forum; they love that building and that’s where they wanna be. And we’ve seen other shows who are like, we wanna be a part of this new space and we’re excited about it, and they’ve toured it and that’s where they wanna be. And then we’ve got a bunch of shows that are saying, we’re doing both.”

Both? Yes, says Zucker — just as a handful of artists have managed to do shows at both the Forum and Crypto (like Lauryn Hill, recently), she says there are those who want to do both the Forum and Intuit now.

“One of the things that works out well with that is that they could break down a show, drive a mile down the road and just rebuild it, and they’ll be ready to go for their next date. So there’s some efficiencies that come with that as well. … We’re still like at our infancy in the booking piece of it, so we’d have to circle back in six months and I can let you know more. But we’re seeing both — we’re seeing people who are holding different points in their tour schedule in the different buildings, and we’re seeing people who are saying: ‘We’re gonna do four or five shows in market. And we know we’re gonna need an off day for voice rest anyway, so we may as well change it up and do different buildings.’ We’re big on making people happy, so, look, we’ve got two extraordinary buildings, and I think they’ve got two incredible choices. So, whatever works for that particular artist works for us too.”

One advantage Intuit may have over the Forum (or the other competitors in the area) may be some of the creature comforts that have been built in for crews as well as fans. Truck drivers often don’t have a chance to do their laundry easily on the road, for example, so Intuit Dome has built-in laundry facilities for visiting crews backstage – not unlike how, on the basketball side, referees have been given their own locker room. Having six loading bays for visiting tours also means tours can load in and out as much as 30% faster, reps say.

As for the advantages average concertgoers will see when the venue opens, it’s not all about razzle-dazzle LED lights, or even fully no-contact/no-checkout concession stands. One of the biggest amenities is due to shortened seatbakes that go along with that steeper rake in the stands: no knees bumping against the backs of seats for tall people.

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