Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer tours the Intuit Dome, the team’s new home in Inglewood, California, which will open for the 2024-25 NBA season.
Photographer: Philip Cheung for Bloomberg BusinessweekBasketball, Basketball, Basketball: Inside Steve Ballmer’s New $2 Billion Arena
The owner of the LA Clippers wants fans to have the same passion for the game that he does, and he’s installing more than 1,000 toilets so they never have to miss a second of the action.
Steve Ballmer’s suite at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles is a bunker beneath the stands, across the hall from the locker room for the Clippers, the NBA team he bought for $2 billion in 2014. It’s a low-lit room with a high-top table, a row of dark couches and three TVs along the far wall. There’s no view of the court, which is fine with Ballmer. During games he rarely strays from his first-row seat along the baseline. On a Tuesday night in December, two hours before tipoff against the Sacramento Kings, Ballmer is sitting at the table explaining how happy he is to be leaving this place next season.
“We can’t establish a sense of identity around here,” he says of the arena, which the Clippers share with the NBA’s Lakers, the NHL’s Kings and the WNBA’s Sparks, as well as about 50 concerts per year. On game nights the Clippers hang portraits of their current players over the Lakers’ championship banners. (There’s a lot to cover: The Lakers have won 17 NBA titles, tied for the most with the Boston Celtics. The Clippers have won zero.) “I think most people would say we’re in the Lakers’ building,” Ballmer says.