Roughly 2,000 bartenders, servers, cooks, and dishwashers at SoFi Stadium pulled back from the brink of a strike on June 9, reaching a tentative labor agreement with Legends Global, the venue’s food and beverage operator. The deal landed just three days before the US men’s national soccer team is set to take the field against Paraguay in its 2026 FIFA World Cup opener.
Had the workers walked out, the chaos would have been difficult to overstate. SoFi Stadium is one of the crown jewels of this year’s World Cup, scheduled to host eight total matches during the tournament. Imagine 70,000 fans showing up to one of the biggest sporting events on the planet and finding nobody behind the concession stands.
What happened
The workers, represented by UNITE HERE Local 11, had already voted to authorize a strike before the tentative deal materialized.
In this case, the other side was Legends Global, a hospitality company that operates food and beverage services at the Inglewood, California venue. Legends isn’t the stadium’s owner. That distinction belongs to Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, the entity behind the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Chargers, both of which call SoFi home.
