It was replaced with BMO Stadium, home of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles FC, which opened in 2018.

The arena played host to the top indoor track athletics meet on the West Coast, the annual Los Angeles Invitational track meet (frequently called the "Sunkist Invitational", with title sponsorship by Sunkist Growers, Incorporated), from 1960 until the event's demise in 2004.

The arena hosted When Worlds Collide, a 1994 joint card between the Mexican lucha libre promotion Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (AAA) and WCW (which normally called the Great Western Forum home until they, too, moved to Staples Center) that is credited with introducing the lucha style to English-speaking audiences in the U.S. After then-Clippers owner Donald Sterling turned down an agreement to re-locate the franchise permanently to Anaheim's Arrowhead Pond (now Honda Center) in 1996, the Coliseum Commission had discussions to build an on-site replacement for the Sports Arena.

There were also similar plans years earlier, in 1989, as Sterling had discussions with then-Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and then-Coliseum Commission president (and eventual Bradley mayoral successor) Richard Riordan about a Sports Arena replacement; Sterling threatened to leave the Sports Arena and move elsewhere in the Los Angeles region if plans did not come together.

The original crown of the arena, one of its most distinguishing characteristics, was the countless small ceramic tiles, each measuring no more than a square inch in width.

In order to remedy this, a new crown was designed, this time using individual sections of EIFS (Exterior insulation finishing system), which offered the decided advantages of better durability, easier maintenance and improved thermal characteristics.

Once the structural work was finished, the walls, ceilings, doors, floors and other areas involved in the modification had to be put back together.

It became effective on July 29, 2013, and the Commission transferred day-to-day management and financial responsibilities for the Coliseum and Sports Arena to USC.

This included the rehiring by USC, on a fixed term basis, of the Coliseum/Sports Arena employees who had been working for the commission the previous day.

[9] The Sports Arena was demolished in order to replace it with a more in-demand facility — a soccer-specific stadium that would house an MLS team.

On May 18, 2015, Los Angeles Football Club announced its intentions to build a privately funded 22,000-seat soccer-specific stadium at the site for $250 million.

The arena has a unique, expansive floor-level footprint of nearly 130,000 sq ft (12,000 m2) and 101,557 square feet (9,435.0 m2) on the concourse level, allowing the installation of any needed display, food or other programming requirements.

Spectators could reach arena level seating area either by a circulatory ramp on the southwest side of the building or by a stairway located next to the north doors.