The smallest stadium in the NFL has not further shrunk.
Contrary to a tweeted photo from Les Bowen of the Philadelphia Daily News implying that seats have been covered at StubHub Center, the Chargers tell PFT that the banners shown in the image have been there all year, and that they do not reduce the capacity below the 27,000 seats currently contained in the venue.
No seats are under the signage, which the Chargers opted to use so that the concourses, restrooms, and traffic wouldn’t be affected until the team had a better feel for whether an extra 3,000 seats (if the Chargers opt to expand the seating) would work.
This helps explain the sudden change in the listed capacity of the venue from 30,000 in the offseason to 27,000 once the season arrived. It could have been 30,000, but the Chargers opted to reduce it by 10 percent, at least for 2017. The Chargers will play there through 2019, joining the Rams in a new stadium in Inglewood in 2020.
Of course, none of this changes the perception/reality that the Chargers are struggling to fill the small stadium with Chargers fans; plenty of Eagles fans likely will be in the StubHub Center on Sunday.