Swimming at SoFi.
Ceremonies at the Coliseum.
An athletes village in UCLA dorms.
And hopefully, another surplus…

The strategy echoes what Paris aimed for in 2024, a similarly frugal approach intended to avoid the bulging budgets that have plagued past host cities. But Paris still had to invest heavily in infrastructure like sewage containment tanks for the Seine river.

In Los Angeles, by contrast, keeping costs down will be essential. That’s because the 2028 Games will rely on private funding and organization.

LA28’s projected budget is $6.9 billion.

There is a catch, though: both the city and state have agreed to backstop the Olympics financially, meaning taxpayer dollars could be used if the OCOG goes over budget or falls short on revenue. 

In 2017, the Los Angeles City Council and the State of California each pledged up to $250 million in public funds to cover potential shortfalls. Those guarantees were a condition of the host city agreement with the IOC; any host city would need them. And they represent a significant safety net for the OCOG – though Wasserman and his team insist the Games will be cost-neutral to taxpayers.

The idea to run the games like a business isn’t new. “This is the American model,” according to Alan Abrahamson, foremost U.S. authority on the Olympic Games and longtime observer of the International Olympic Committee. 

“[The OCOG] is a private business that springs up, puts on the games, and then goes out of business. And here the budget is 7 billion with a B dollars. So that’s a lot, but it’s a lot less than recent Olympics in other places,” he said in an interview.

And Los Angeles has experience. It hosted the 1984 Summer Games under a similar model with a budget of about $500 million dollars (about $1.5 billion today). It even made a sizable surplus doing so thanks to rigorous and efficient organization. 

American protests during the Moscow 1980 Games further marred the sporting institution in controversy. These misfortunes cast a shadow over future host cities, many of which began to question whether an Olympic bid might ultimately be more of a burden than a boon. 

By 1978, LA was the only city willing to step up. Then-mayor Tom Bradley saw hosting the Games as a way to elevate the city’s stature worldwide. And lucky for him, it was essentially the only viable bidder. The only competition came from Tehran, which was undergoing revolution at the time.

Still, the general sentiment among Angelinos was that hosting the Olympics would lose the city money. According to a 1977 poll issued by Mayor Bradley, 70% supported LA hosting the games. But that number fell to just 35% if it would cost the taxpayers to do so. Residents and lawmakers alike felt using public funding for the Games could be financially catastrophic. 

Zev Yaroslavsky, now Director of the Los Angeles Institute at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, was a rising member of the L.A. City Council at the time. He and other officials passed an amendment to the city charter preventing any spending on the Olympics other than money generated by specific Games-related taxes.

“We weren’t going to put the city on the hook. That charter amendment was nonnegotiable.”

Zev Yaroslavsky
Former L.A. City Councilmember, Director of the Los Angeles Institute @ UCLA Luskin

But it also meant the organizing committee would operate fully independently and with full responsibility; financially or otherwise. There would be no bailout from the city or state if costs ran over. As such, there would be no grand construction projects or white-elephant stadium orders. Instead, organizers reused existing venues, leaned into corporate sponsorships and pioneered big media rights deals.

The mandated fiscal wall, then, meant Peter Ueberroth, the entrepreneur-turned-Chairman of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, had no other choice but to run the Games like a business. 

The result was a $250 million surplus, a rarity in Olympic history. “It was a big success financially,” said Yaroslavsky. “[Ueberroth] put his money where his mouth was.” And the city put that money to use, investing Games-related earnings into the LA84 Foundation, which continues to promote and fund youth sports around the city. More than $160 million has been distributed since its founding.

For Yaroslavsky, though, the real triumph of those Games was the cultural boost LA got. The 10-week Olympic Arts Festival that followed brought world-class music, theater, dance and visual arts to the city. Yaroslavsky credits the festival with helping launch the city’s current arts infrastructure. “It’s the reason we have an opera company today in Los Angeles,” he said. “The cultural impact was just as lasting as the economic one.”

“It is irrefutable that the Los Angeles Games in 1984 turned Los Angeles into a world class city. Nobody thought of Los Angeles as like Paris, London, Rome – until after 1984.”

ALAN ABRAHAMSON
Foremost authority on the Olympics & IOC; Founder & writer @ 3 Wire Sports

So for all the risk Los Angeles assumed in bidding for the 1984 Olympics, the gamble paid off. The city emerged debt-free and into an economic boom. Better yet, “what happened was, everyone wanted to be in Los Angeles,” Alan Abrahamson said.

“Most of the growth of downtown Los Angeles, in terms of office buildings and commercial real estate, happened directly after 1984 and I would predict, at the risk of being a little rosy, that we will see the same thing [in 2028],” he added.

But the stakes in 2028 are different. Los Angeles is no longer trying to prove itself, it’s trying to hold itself together. And hosting an Olympic Games is no longer seen as the inherent hazard it was in the late ‘70s, rather a catalyst for investment into a city.

While in theory hosting the Games won’t cost the city or the state directly, it will be footing the bill for other expenses needed to support them. Namely infrastructure projects aimed at increasing public transit capacity, as well as through subsidies for the development and refurbishment of some venues.

For many critics, transport infrastructure represents Los Angeles’ achilles heel. In Paris, a condensed urban layout, world-class metro system and bike network improvements ahead of the Games made shepherding the 800,000+ people spectating or participating relatively simple and sustainable. 

“In Paris, everyone could ride the metro. That’s not going to be the case here… these [LA] Games sprawl.”

ALAN ABRAHAMSON

Los Angeles’ famous urban sprawl means venues are far between and connected by a patchwork of car-dependent roadways and an underbuilt transit system. 

Many of LA Metro’s current projects – including the D- (purple-) line subway extension to Westwood and the LAX/Metro connection and peoplemover – were approved and funded before even the Olympic bid. But with the Games now looming, these upgrades are folded into broader promises of the city’s Olympic readiness. 

Mayor Karen Bass has said she wants the 2028 Games to be “car-free,” and these long-planned projects are now being reframed as part of that coordinated vision.

But as independent transit analyst and YouTube creator Nick Andert (Nandert) explains, that vision is more fragmented than it seems. “The chicken-and-egg problem is real,” he said. The infrastructure needs to be there in order for people to believe public transit can supplant Southern California car culture.

“I think we’re in a situation where it still remains a little too unreliable to conveniently get to most of the city via transit,” Andert said of Bass’ aspirations.

Andert argues that the upgrades now tied to Olympic planning and Bass’ “28×28” plan were already in progress and won’t do enough to help capacity. Further, the window to use the Games as political leverage to build more transit has largely closed.

Andert blames a transit-planning model shaped by politics, not ridership demand data or regional connectivity, for many of Metro’s shortcomings. 

To get ballot measures R (2008) and M (2016) passed – small sales taxes used to fund public transit – LA Metro had to promise projects to constituencies across the county. That meant agreeing to slower, less efficient routes in lower-density areas before tackling high-ridership corridors.

Meanwhile, strict environmental reviews and resident resistance continue to derail high-impact projects. “We’ve gone from Robert Moses destroying entire neighborhoods to: we can’t repave this sidewalk unless everyone within a three-block radius says okay,” he said.

Yaroslavsky and Abrahamson both recall how freeways emptied out during the summer of ‘84, as many Angelenos left town, wary of Olympic crowds.

But the sheer number of cars in Los Angeles has increased dramatically since then: going from around 4 million registered cars in 1980 to nearly 7.5 million as of 2023.

Abrahamson is particularly worried about bus transit in the first few days of the event. He predicts immense traffic on routes between in-demand venues thanks to volume.

“They’ve already talked about having to bring in 3700 busses… There are not 3700 drivers of these buses in and around Los Angeles. You’re gonna have to bring in drivers from you, name it, Fresno, Bakersfield, Albuquerque, Carson City…” he said.

Abrahamson urges patience when it comes to the transit benefits LA28 may bring; pointing to the 2004 Athens Olympics – widely considered a financial disaster due to runaway costs, rushed construction, and underused venues. 

“You really can’t measure an Olympics until 20 years later,” he said. “Athens in 2004 was a mess, but if you look at it in 2024, it’s a totally different city. Did they overspend? And was it a huge disaster? Yes, but … they have a new Metro, they have a new airport, the city’s way more livable.”  

He added that while Metro’s improvements were planned well before the bid, “we’re going to have a people mover at the airport by 2026. We’re finally going to have Metro connecting to LAX.”

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The LA28 plan is drawing concern for lacking the factors that made 1984 a success: rigorous-enough financial oversight and an efficient approach to the logistics of hosting.

According to Abrahamson, “I think that when the history of this is written, people will look at what happened from 2017 to 2021-ish and go ‘Why didn’t you do more?’” 

Los Angeles initially bid for the 2024 Summer Games back in 2016 under then-mayor Eric Garcetti. Candidates to host the Games at that time included Paris, Hamburg, Boston, Budapest and Rome.

By the next year, all but Los Angeles and Paris had pulled their bids due to public opposition. 

With just two viable cities left, the IOC made the extraordinary decision to elect both host cities at the same time. Paris would host 2024, and Los Angeles would have to wait until 2028.

So LA has been given 11 years – up from the usual seven – to plan and produce a Summer Games. That head start was meant to be a blessing. To some insiders, it seems LA has blown a four-year lead.

Jim Bell is the Senior Vice President of Media for the LA28 OCOG. Formerly the head of Olympic coverage at NBC, Bell now oversees the media operations for the 2028 Games. 

“LA’s probably had, like, too much time – and now they’re running out of time,” Bell said. “It’s weird. That window kind of closed. ‘Oh, we already have all our stadiums,’ right? But that doesn’t mean everything’s figured out.”

Bell’s role is to integrate the Games’ media rights holders – NBC in the U.S. – with the IOC’s broadcasting company that actually films it all. 

That encompasses everything from determining the number of cameras needed to show an event to answering whether “we’re going to call SoFi stadium, SoFi stadium; or are they going to do a sponsorship deal? Are we going to be able to integrate that with marketing? And where’s NBC in all this? How’s all that revenue getting shared? It’s a big, kind of messy puzzle.”

Bell was brought on in January of this year and says many of the finer details are still being sorted as 2028 looms. And while the planning may feel behind schedule to some, Bell insists that worry comes with the job.

“We’re professional, paid worriers,” he said. Regarding congestion, “you need the athletes, you need the officials, and you need the broadcasters. If, you know, a fan’s running late, the event is still going to happen.”

“You’d worry– I mean look, London traffic, I mean oh my God… Rio traffic? Oy! Beijing in 2008, I mean, Athens traffic?

There’s really no city left on the planet, I think, that’s going to host a summer Games, that isn’t of a certain size and scale, that doesn’t have questions about traffic and transportation. LA maybe gets a little extra attention because it’s such a famously busy freeway city…”

JIM BELL
Senior Vice President, Media @ LA28

The logistical pressure Bell describes isn’t just about cameras or crowd control, but rather making good on the budget. After all, any financial overrun could trigger the city’s $250 million guarantee.

Operationally, Bell describes plenty of logistical pressure. But financially? Experts find the real risk to be overstated.

Abrahamson is confident Wasserman’s LA OCOG will be able to operate within their $7 billion budget; not needing those state backups. “There is very little danger that that [public] money is going to be touched,” Abrahamson said. 

When accounting for the IOC’s contribution and estimated earnings on ticket sales across LA’s slew of venues, the total figure LA28 needs to come up with settles much lower at $2.5 billion. Considering the Tokyo 2020 Games generated well over $3 billion in domestic sponsorship cash alone, experts say that goal is “eminently doable” in the U.S. 

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