On an average Sunday, parking at the Midas auto repair shop in Inglewood, California is free. On Super Bowl Sunday, it could cost as much as $1,500.
Attendance will be at an all-time high when the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals clash in SoFi Stadium, which typically seats around 70,000 but can expand to as many as 100,000 for big events. But thanks to stages and event spaces occupying some of the lots surrounding the stadium, parking there will be extremely scarce.
That is forcing football fans to find alternative places to park. For a few hours Sunday, Inglewood businesses and residents with driveways and garages suddenly find themselves with some of the most valuable real estate in the city — and they're looking to cash in.
More than 100 spots are up for grabs on the ticket exchange site StubHub, and they range wildly in price. A spot in the Civic Center parking garage costs $135, while the asking price for a spot in a small parking lot about a mile from the stadium is $4,850.
Most parking passes are listed for $300 to $400 and include spots in the lots of businesses such as Hollywood Park Casino and Midas.
The StubHub listings come from sellers who've been permitted by the city to rent out spots on game days as well as from resellers who prepaid for spots and are trying to turn a quick profit by selling them to someone else.
Inglewood residents want in on the action.
Hugo Vincent lives a mile from the stadium, and he's already sold a spot in his driveway for $200. As part of the arrangement, he agreed to drive the person to SoFi on game day.
"This place is a prison on Sundays. I can't leave my own neighborhood because the traffic is so bad," he said. "Why shouldn't I be able to make some money for the inconvenience?"
Vincent moved to Inglewood nine years ago, never expecting an NFL stadium would be built in the city. Now, every Sunday during football season, he deals with traffic gridlock, turning weekend errands into all-day affairs.
He's one of many Inglewood residents who have listed spots on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, where communication is more direct and 100% of the proceeds go to the seller instead of the ticket exchange platform taking a cut.
Connell Black lives in Renaissance, a gated community just northeast of the stadium, and is shopping around a pair of parking spots for $275 each. He said people in the community have been selling parking in their driveways all season long, so he's trying it out for the first time.
"It doesn't hurt to pick up some extra change, but it's also a decent alternative for people," he said. "I saw some were charging twice that, so I listed mine at a fair market rate."
On StubHub, spots in Hollywood Park Casino start at $300 and go up to $1,000, and Black said his place is a shorter walk to SoFi. He's already received some inquiries.
Other parking spots are popping up on SpotHero, a digital marketplace exclusively for parking spots. The company has added 20 new parking locations since 2020, and it has seen an uptick from businesses looking to lease out their spots.
"The L.A. Super Bowl Host Committee estimates that as many as 150,000 out-of-towners will come to the area, staying an average of four days," SpotHero Chief Executive Mark Lawrence said. "The official parking lots at SoFi are also mainly allocated to season ticket holders and other VIPs. This means attendees outside of those categories will have to book their parking elsewhere."
He said that on Super Bowl Sunday, the average parking spot within two miles of the stadium costs $250.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, and people are taking advantage," said one property manager who declined to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
His company is one of several that has received a permit from the city to provide overflow parking from the stadium. One of the properties he manages, an apartment complex 1.2 miles from the stadium, has four spots available on StubHub for $588 each.
Those prices may seem like a stretch, but parking someplace close enough to walk can be much quicker than trying to catch a city-operated shuttle.
"When the stadium first opened to fans when the Bears and Rams played in September, it was a zoo," the property manager said. "It took shuttles an hour to move 100 yards."
Radiologist Walter Maynard has owned a 40-car parking lot about a mile north of SoFi since 1974. He sold parking spots back when the Los Angeles Lakers played at the Forum, and he's still selling them now.
He said the city reached out to him about providing off-site parking since his lot is so close to SoFi, so he got a permit and a business license in order to sell spots. For the Super Bowl, he bumped his prices to $140 — a price that's well below most of the listings online.
"I didn't want to price-gouge the public, and I wanted to reward the people who were loyal customers for me all season long," he said.
The spots sold out quickly, and now they're surfacing for sale on StubHub for hundreds, sometimes thousands more. The cheapest is $329. The most expensive is $4,850.
"I'm competing not only against homeowners who don't have a permit, but now against resellers," he said.
In July, Inglewood announced sweeping restrictions to prevent SoFi attendees from hogging all the street parking.
The city started requiring a permit to park for more than two hours on city streets outside the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The rules are enforced with fines and towing, and permits are given only to Inglewood residents. To accommodate SoFi visitors, the city also set up remote parking and shuttles.
During the chaos of game days, some have attempted parking schemes.
During the NFC championship game on Sunday, CBS-TV Channel 2 came across a man identified only as Charles charging fans $100 to park and tailgate in an empty lot across the street from SoFi. But he didn't own the lot, and police shut down the operation.
Riding a bike near the parking lot a few days later, Charles, who said his initials are C.G., reflected on the incident.
"SoFi Stadium is only good for people who have money. Not for the little guy," he told The Times.
An Inglewood resident for the last four decades, he said he ran the scheme because his rent has skyrocketed since the stadium began construction.
With police standing by, he returned all the money that remained; an unidentified man had taken off with some of the stash, according to the CBS report. Charles said he wasn't arrested.
"Not all of Inglewood is as safe as the area around SoFi," he said. "I was trying to provide them a service."
