Measure AT

City of Inglewood Ordinance To Amend the Admissions Tax for Large Venues

Measure AT will amend the City's admissions tax on large venues to establish tiered rates of 10% and 2.5% based on venue seating capacity, and to remove the existing annual cap on admissions tax revenue, resulting in increased general fund revenues.

This measure requires approval by a majority of voters voting on the measure to pass.

Fiscal Impact: Financial modeling indicates that removing the restrictive cap will increase recurring municipal revenue by an estimated $47 million to $50 million annually. Per Inglewood Municipal Code Section 9-16, one hundred percent of these proceeds are credited directly to the General Fund, providing the City Council with flexible, discretionary resources.

Next Los Angeles County Measure: Measure BB

See Endorsements for Measure AT
Background

Inglewood is home to many entertainment venues, including the Youtube Theatre (6,000 capacity), Kia Forum (17,000 capacity), Intuit Dome (18,000 capacity), and Sofi Stadium (70,000 capacity).

The municipal admissions tax is fundamentally designed as a regulatory and compensatory mechanism. Large sports and entertainment venues generate immense, concentrated, and recurring demands on city infrastructure and vital public services, including police deployment, fire protection, emergency medical response, traffic synchronization, street maintenance, and sanitation services. Because these impacts scale directly with the size of the crowd and the frequency of events, venue-seating capacity serves as the most accurate, objective proxy for the strain placed on public resources. 

The existing annual tax cap creates an inequitable operational environment where local residents are forced to subsidize major commercial entities. The municipal costs associated with traffic management, public safety, and road wear do not cease once a venue hits an arbitrary revenue threshold. Every single concert, game, and tournament hosted after the cap is met costs the City hundreds of thousands of dollars in active staff hours and infrastructure degradation.

Implementing a tiered rate structure ensures that mega-venues generating the largest regional impacts contribute an appropriate, proportional share to the citywide systems supporting them. Under the proposed reform, venues with a capacity of 20,000 or more will be assessed a ten percent rate, while mid-sized venues between 10,000 and 20,000 seats will be assessed a two and one-half percent rate. This aligns municipal revenue collection with actual operational footprint, correcting a historical imbalance where the largest operations failed to cover the community impacts that they generate.

Proposal

If approved, Measure AT would eliminate the annual cap on admissions tax collections for large venues (that was established by an adopted initiative in 2015) and re-establish a tiered rate structure of 10% for venues with a capacity of 20,000 or more and 2.5% for mid-sized venues with a capacity of 10,000-20,000.

Source: Measure AT Impact Analysis

Los Angeles County Election Resources