Levi’s Stadium ranked 12th best stadium in The Athletic’s annual stadium rankings

Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, began its life as a punchline and slowly evolved into just a stadium. While it has all sorts of tech bells and whistles, it’s also been marred with problems such as the lack of a roof to block the sun on clear days (which fries the faithful at the game) and a field that took longer than seemed necessary to at least play a little league game on without getting torn up.

Nowadays, it’s just “there” which makes sense. In The Athletic’s annual stadium rankings, they ranked Levi’s Stadium 12 out of 30. Remember some teams share a stadium, so that’s why there are 30 venues. As no surprise, U.S. Bank Stadium (home of the Minnesota Vikings) took the stop spot and the writers said, “This wasn’t even close.” SoFi Stadium (Which has both the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers) took the obvious No. 2.

There wasn’t much said about Levi’s in the article. All of two sentences actually:

“It’s one of the league’s newer stadiums, opening in 2014, but there isn’t much about it that stands out. It also ranked 12th three years ago.”

I think that just sums it up. Levi’s stadium is a stadium. A lot of its field issues have been worked out, but even then it seems like it’s not on the level of U.S. Bank Stadium, SoFi, or even Jerry World.

What is Levi’s good for? Well, their executive suites are something else. The 49ers have requested a $120 million loan to enhance Levi’s, wanting to improve the stadium by upgrading suites with custom/lockable wine fridges and liquor cabinets.

While Levi’s stadium itself doesn’t have much luster, the political drama surrounding it is rather fascinating. It seems since the stadium was built the city of Santa Clara and the 49ers have been at odds over the lease, communication and every other detail a successful partnership typically doesn’t have.

What do you think of Levi’s stadium? Do you think there’s something we’re missing here?