Christy Castillo Butcher Joins LA Stadium, Future Home of Rams and Chargers, After 20 Years with AEG: Exclusive
After nearly 20 years booking Staples Center and Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles for AEG, Christy Castillo Butcher is heading across town to book the future home of the Los Angeles Rams and L.A…
After nearly 20 years booking Staples Center and Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles for AEG, Christy Castillo Butcher is heading across town to book the future home of the National Football League’s Los Angeles Rams and Chargers.
Castillo Butcher will serve as senior vp of programming at the $5 billion Los Angeles Stadium and 298-acre Entertainment District at Hollywood Park being built by billionaire and Rams owner Stan Kroenke. The development is being built on the old Hollywood Park Racetrack, and will include a 70,240-seat NFL stadium that is expandable to a capacity of 100,000 for concerts, a 6,000-seat performance venue, 1.5 million square feet of retail and office space, 2,500 private residences, a hotel and more than 20 acres of public parks and green space.
The longtime talent-buyer will report to Jason Gannon, the newly-hired managing director of the stadium and entertainment district. Castillo Butcher will program and book the different venues and event spaces on the property, including the centerpiece two-team NFL stadium, which is expected to pick up the bulk of the stadium concert traffic in Los Angeles, including shows from AEG’s Messina Touring Group, which reported $480 million in ticket sales in 2018 to Billboard Boxscore, as well as Live Nation which produced Beyonce and Jay-Z‘s On the Run II tour, grossing $230 million.
“We’ll be booking all the national tours, plus individual one-offs and cultural events,” she tells Billboard. The stadium will also be home to Super Bowl LVI in February 2022, the College Football National Championship game in 2023 and the opening & closing ceremonies of the 2028 Olympic Games.
Besides the stadium, she’ll also book the yet-to-be-named performance venue, and Champion’s Plaza, an open outdoor space that will serve as the town square for the $5 billion development in Inglewood.
“Champion’s Plaza can act as its own event space, or it can be a part of the stadium and performance venue, creating one big venue linking all three together,” she explains. The 6,000-capacity performance venue will be configured like a theater and sit under the stadium’s teardrop-shaped canopy. Besides concerts, it can also host events like the NFL Draft, e-sports competition or awards shows, Castillo Butcher says.
Castillo Butcher joins the stadium after nearly 20 years at AEG, working her way up to senior vp of booking and events at two of the country’s top grossing venues, Staples Center, ranked No. 7 on Billboard’s 2017 arena chart, and Microsoft Theater, which closed last year at the No. 5 spot on Billboard’s mid-sized venue chart. She tells Billboard she decided to make the jump and work for Kroenke because of the opportunity to build events that would utilize the district’s entire 298-acre campus.
“It lends itself to the festival atmosphere,” she tells Billboard. “The vision is for a mixed-used destination for music festivals, food and wine events and world class sporting and Olympic events.”
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