11 of the World's Most Expensive Stadiums

AT&T Stadium is home to the NFL's Dallas Cowboys. The 80,000-seat facility is in Arlington, Texas, and cost $1.2 billion to design and build in 2009. It includes one of the world's largest HDTV video boards and still has the largest retractable endzone doors in the world. The stadium also includes seating for 80,000 that can expand to 100,000. In December 2022, the NFL approved a plan to spend an additional $295 million on renovations. One thing that sets AT&T Stadium apart is the Dallas Cowboys art collection, which includes 90 large art installations from several artists.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London is considered one of the most technologically advanced in the world. It's home to the Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur and was completed in 2019, boasting a reported construction cost of 1 million British pounds, according to BBC News and Stadiumdb.com (about $1.28 billion at 2019 exchange rates). What makes Tottenham Hotspur so impressive is it is the first stadium ever to have a fully retractable grass field. That also made it possible for Tottenham Hotspur to have a 10-year partnership with the NFL.

Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, is the home of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers and professional soccer's San Jose Earthquakes. The stadium opened in 2014 and construction cost of $1.2 billion, though the public only paid for $114 million of that. The rest was financed privately by the NFL and by the 49ers. The stadium seats 68,500 and earned LEED Gold Certification for sustainable design and construction, both as new construction and as an existing building. The stadium contains more than 400 miles of data cable to support its advanced technology. The Art Collection at Levi's Stadium also has more than 200 original pieces and 500 photographs from 23 local California artists showcased throughout.

National Stadium is the centerpiece of the Singapore Sports Hub, which also includes the Singapore Indoor Stadium and OCBC Arena. Construction costs totaled $1.3 billion. National Stadium opened in 2014 as home to the Singapore national soccer team, but it's also used for rugby, cricket and other events, and can seat up to 55,000 spectators. It features a retractable roof with innovative lighting system that is embedded with 20,000 LED lights so it can also function as a giant screen, with projection visible from inside and outside. National Stadium holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest freestanding dome.

UBS Arena is one of the newest on our list and the only hockey arena. It opened in 2021 in Elmont, New York, as the home of the National Hockey League's New York Islanders at a cost $1.5 billion. The arena features the largest arena scoreboard in New York state and an architectural design inspired by iconic New York City landmarks. But it's not just about hockey. UBS says it's also designed for music, with world-class acoustics and "more restrooms per person than any arena in Metro New York," according to the stadium's website.

While American football stadiums dominate this list, the Brits made the list, too, with the new iteration of Wembley Stadium. The 90,000-seat stadium has the second largest seating capacity in Europe and is the most expensive ever built in the U.K. at a cost of $1.57 billion in 2007, according to The New York Times. It replaced a landmark of the same name built in 1923, took six years to build and seats 90,000 fans. It's the national stadium of England and the home of English football, er, soccer.

MetLife Stadium is home to the NFL's New York Jets and New York Giants. The massive stadium is in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and construction was completed in 2010 at a whopping cost of $1.6 billion. It seats 82,500 spectators, making it one of the largest in the NFL. It's hosted many major events since opening, including Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.

Mercedes-Benz Stadium is the 71,000-seat arena that hosts the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and the Atlanta United FC soccer team. It opened in 2017 and is the most expensive structure ever built in the city's history. Its construction, which required demolition of the Georgia Dome, cost somewhere between $1.75 and $1.8 billion, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The stadium features numerous design innovations, including an angular roof composed of eight 220-foot (67-meter) petals that, with the push of a button, open and close like the aperture of a camera. It includes 4,000 miles of fiber-optic cable to support the 2,000 TVs throughout, and is the first pro sports venue in the U.S. to earn LEED Platinum Certification.

Allegiant Stadium is home the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Rebels college football team. The stunning 65,000-seat stadium was completed in 2020 on the iconic Las Vegas Strip at a reported cost of $1.99 billion to build, which was under budget, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Fully enclosed and climate-controlled to cope with the Nevada heat, the stadium includes a retractable natural turf field for the NFL, an artificial turf surface for UNLV and, of course, incredible views of the Las Vegas Strip.

The original Yankee Stadium, built in 1923, cost the then-lavish sum of $2.4 million (about $42.4 million in 2022 dollars, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI Inflation Calculator). The new Yankee Stadium, which seats 52,000, was built in 2009 and pays homage to many of the original's architectural details, but it cost a lot more to build — reportedly more than $2.3 billion, according to both The New York Times and City & State New York. In addition to the Yankees, Major League Soccer's New York City FC also calls the stadium home.

Though the true price of SoFi Stadium in Englewood, California, has never been publicly revealed, construction is said to have cost about $5.5 billion, according to multiple sources including Bloomberg and Yahoo Sports. Home to two NFL teams, the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers, SoFi has 70,000 fixed seats but can be expanded to handle 100,000 spectators. It's also a high-tech architectural marvel so complex that a digital twin is used to monitor its operations, with a clear roof coated with a special film that filters the sunlight shining down into it, as well as a series of panels that open and close like sunroofs on cars to help with ventilation. It's environmentally sophisticated as well, with a surrounding landscape that includes more than 5,000 trees and native plants, and a complex system for collecting and storing rainwater for irrigation. Possibly the first stadium ever designed with the Super Bowl in mind, it hosted Super Bowl LVI in 2022. SoFi also will be the site of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Summer Olympics.