Rose Bowl improvements: Eye on the future while preserving the past

College football has undergone monumental changes in recent years, from conference realignments, to annual transfer-portal roster reshufflings, to lucrative deals for use of an athlete’s name, image and likeness.

The Rose Bowl, college football’s answer to Augusta National, has largely stayed the same.

But in the next five years, the 102-year-old stadium is going to undergo some significant alterations intended to improve fan experience for sports and entertainment events, while maintaining the iconic elements that make the Rose Bowl a National Historic Landmark.

“It all goes back to, how do we take the Rose Bowl as it is and revitalize it in a way that enhances it for the next generation of fans?” said Dedan Brozino, president of the Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation and chief development officer.

The improvement plan for the stadium comes in two phases, the first scheduled to be completed before the 2028 Olympic Games — when the Rose Bowl will host soccer — and the second after.

The Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation has conducted a “Lasting Legacy” fundraising campaign this year to gather momentum on the project and has raised enough to pay for the six elements of Phase 1, three of which have been completed.

An artist rendering of UCLA players heading out of the locker room past a club-level area with a bar, restaurant and seating.

(Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation)

The focus now is on generating the $45 million to $50 million required for Phase 2, which consists of improved seating throughout the stadium and a vastly upgraded videoboard.

Rose Bowl officials have shared specifics of the plan with The Times.

The three elements of Phase 1 already completed are the safe-standing area for students on the east side of the bowl, a state-of-the-art sound system and refurbishment of the historic Rose Bowl sign. Coming in the next two years are a field club in the south end zone, upgrading of the gas and water infrastructure, and enhancement of stadium cellular service.

A look at the improvements that have already been made, and ones to come:

The first project was to improve the iconic cursive Rose Bowl marquee at the south end of the stadium. It’s the most photographed and visited location on the site, and it looms over the Court of Champions, the stadium’s busiest place on any event day.

The sign, which features a rose over the green “Rose Bowl” lettering, was created in the 1950s and was patched up and tired looking after nearly 75 years. There was some thought about replacing it, but “replace” is not a welcome word in these parts. It’s about refreshing and refurbishing.

So stadium officials spent between $300,000 and $400,000 to give the original sign a fresh look with updated lighting and electrical components. The sign is far more vibrant, and operators can change the colors of the lettering. The words are blue and gold when UCLA is playing there, or blue to celebrate the Dodgers, or pink for breast cancer awareness.

The project was completed in October, and that was none too soon. It was last January that the R in the Rose Bowl sign flickered and went out at 4 a.m. on the day of the game. It isn’t easy to find an electrician on a holiday, let alone at that hour.

ESPN was on site for College Game Day, and the Rose Bowl sign was a big part of the opening drone shot. The R needed to be illuminated. Fortunately, the problem was solved mere moments before the show started.

“In the opening scene of the show, in the forefront you can actually see an electrical truck pulling away,” Brozino said. “It was like Jack Bauer defusing a bomb on ’24.’”

An artist rendering shows a club-level bar and dining area.

(Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation)

The hallmark project of Phase 1 is the creation of a swanky field club behind the south end zone, the first ground-level premium seating in the stadium’s history. All the space under the seating up to row 28 will be gutted to make room for an indoor/outdoor socialization space for games with an adjacent allotment of 800 club seats.

So if you buy a ticket to the field club, which will feature a bar and various food options, that comes with a club seat. The goal is to create an in-game tailgate environment behind that end zone.

Stadium officials studied similar offerings at college and pro stadiums around the country, taking particular note of the club seating at Camp Randall Stadium at the University of Wisconsin.

“You see a lot of middle-aged parents with grown kids in these spaces, and young alumni,” Brozino said. “It’s a much more sociable space. So maybe you’re not watching every play, you’re watching one out of every four plays while your kids and your spouses and friends hang out together.”

The club is fully funded and scheduled to be completed by fall of 2026, and it’s not just for football. That area is currently backstage for major stadium shows, the way that Coldplay or U2 or the Rolling Stones take the stage. Upgrading that will make it a more attractive draw when it comes to booking those performers.

What’s more, when there’s a much smaller stage show for a crowd of 18,000 or fewer, the stadium can erect a stage that faces that club area, with the San Gabriel Mountains as a backdrop, and create a more intimate venue within a venue.

A seating element of Phase 1 that’s already completed isn’t about sitting at all, but standing. The Rose Bowl created a “safe standing” area for UCLA students behind the visitors’ bench. Not all conferences allow that positioning, but the Big Ten does.

Eight rows of seats are closed for UCLA games, and students can lean on the removable railings that have been installed. Students claim the roughly 2,000 spots on a first-come, first-served basis, and they’re directly in line with the TV cameras.

An artist rendering shows how reconfigured seating would be a contiguous oval shape and have a more gradual slope.

(Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation)

The Rose Bowl is a National Historic Landmark, and maintaining that status is paramount to people associated with the stadium and Pasadena preservationists. Among the signature elements essential to the design are the contiguous oval shape and the gradual slope — also known as the rake — of the seating.

There’s logic behind the symmetry of the Rose Bowl. Organizers of the New Year’s Day game wanted to make sure there were no home and visiting teams. Everyone receives the same treatment, has identical locker rooms, etc. So preserving that contiguous shape — as opposed to, say, the asymmetry of SoFi Stadium or the Intuit Dome — took on a different importance.

Then there’s the low-slung look of the seating, unlike the vertical prominence of modern stadiums. There are no obstructed-view seats in the Rose Bowl, and the suites and club seats are the farthest from the field, in the Terry Donahue Pavilion.

Phase 2 of the Lasting Legacy Campaign includes resizing and improving the stadium seating, something that isn’t scheduled until 2029 at earliest. Instead of clawing into the existing historic concrete, the plan calls for putting a material on top of that concrete, a protective overlay, and building new seating on top of that.

Spectators will have 4 to 6 inches more legroom, and the sections will contain about half as many seats from one side to the other.

“That will be a huge change,” said Jens Weiden, Rose Bowl chief executive. “Because some of our sections are 60 seats wide. If you sit in the middle, you have close to 30 people to your left and right that you have to pass over when you leave your seat. That’s saying, ‘Excuse me. Sorry. Excuse me,’ about 30 times.”

Instead of 77 rows from the bottom to the base of the pavilion, the new design will feature about 50 rows. That will reduce the capacity from about 90,000 to 70,000.

“Building stadiums that accommodate more than 70,000 people doesn’t happen anymore because when you get over 70,000, the experience just goes down for everybody,” Weiden said. “It doesn’t just go down for that extra 20,000, it goes down for everybody because now you have to get that many people into parking lots, into restrooms on concourses, everything.”

The plan calls for a variety of seat types, from molded plastic ones to thickly padded club seats.

An artist rendering of a new videoboard for the Rose Bowl, which will not hinder the view of the San Gabriel Mountains in the background.

(Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation)

The most expensive part of Phase 2 is a new videoboard, which will follow the curvature of the north side rim and be much wider — but not taller — than the current screen. The goal is to create significantly more space for visuals while not blocking the signature view of the San Gabriel Mountains.

The new videoboard is projected to cost between $25 million and $30 million, not because of the screen itself but because it won’t be mounted on the stadium. Instead, in the name of protecting the historic structure, the board will be suspended by an independent system, as if arms were reaching over the rim and into the bowl.

The current videoboard is mostly used for replays. A new wider one will allow for out-of-town scores, highlights from other games, kiss cam and the like — while not being the dominant element of the fan experience.

“It will be the equivalent of four or five connected screens up there that can be used for different things,” Weiden said. “But what we didn’t want was somebody driving up to the Rose Bowl to see the beautiful marquee and have this giant scoreboard behind it like a backstop.”

The overarching idea is to take an essential step toward the future while keeping one foot respectfully planted in the past.