Sticker shock: LA residents alarmed by price of 2028 Olympics presale tickets

Since tickets for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles went on sale for local residents on 2 April, excitement for the Games has given way to sticker shock among some Angelenos over what they describe as exorbitant prices and an unexpected service fee.

LA28 had made a wave of slots in the presale ticket lottery available for residents throughout southern California, where the majority of contests will take place, and in Oklahoma City, which will host the canoe slalom and softball events. Tickets ranged in price from $28 into the thousands.

Many residents found the $28 tickets quickly sold out or unavailable for more popular sports like gymnastics and track and field, and were left instead with exponentially more expensive tickets. In addition to the ticket price, customers were met with a 24% service fee that LA28 said was meant to go toward necessities like customer service during the Games.

Los Angeles resident Kathy Dorn told the Guardian that she registered for the lottery to buy a ticket on the morning of 3 April and was surprised by the prices and concerned about the fates of those whose slots were later in the day.

“Most gymnastics tickets sold out during my time slot, I didn’t expect them to be gone that quickly,” she said. “Overall, I found the prices quite high, and it didn’t seem like they released additional inventory for people with later time slots, which made it even more frustrating.”

Ultimately, Dorn spent about $1,200 on tickets to watch the rhythmic and artistic gymnastics preliminaries and the sailing finals. She wanted to go to a swimming event but decided against it when she saw the price tag. “I didn’t want to spend $558 per ticket for a two-hour event,” she added.

One Los Angeles resident told the city’s local NBC affiliate that he spent $11,000 on eight tickets for track and field events, with nearly $400 of that going toward the service fee.

“It’s a choice,” ticket-buyer Tony Anthony told NBC Los Angeles. “We didn’t go top-tier, but we were in the $1,000 range per ticket. You hear things like: ‘Tickets as low as $28’ and there were none available.”

In response to the frustration over ticket prices being out of reach for many locals, Reynold Hoover, chief executive officer of the LA Olympics, said that most of the $28 tickets went to purchasers in southern California and Oklahoma City.

“The success of the Locals Presale speaks for itself: Hundreds of thousands of $28 tickets – the lowest priced Olympic tickets in modern history – were sold to LA and OKC Locals,” he said in a statement.

Gigi Gutierrez, a spokesperson for LA28, told NBC Los Angeles that the tickets to the Games’ most popular events like swimming and soccer were in line with the cost of other premiere sporting events like the Super Bowl and forthcoming World Cup, which is set to happen in several cities across the US, Mexico and Canada from 11 June to 19 July.

“We tried to overweight those [$28 tickets] into this locals drop because we wanted to make sure local Angelenos had the greatest access to our $28 tickets,” Gutierrez said. “We do have a really affordable group of tickets to try to balance that for the best seats in the house being more expensive.”

LA28 has said the ticket prices are meant to ensure that LA28, which is budgeted at more than $7.1bn, can break even so the city won’t have to cover any costs with taxpayer dollars. This would be a departure from recent Olympic Games in Greece and Brazil, which left the cities with debt and crumbling facilities.

The concern over the price of access and an economic footprint left by the Olympics is especially acute for residents of Inglewood, a majority Black and Latino city nestled within Los Angeles where the opening ceremony and swimming and basketball events are set to take place. In recent years, the city has built an entertainment zone that includes SoFi Stadium, which hosts the Los Angeles Rams and artists like Beyoncé and the Intuit Dome where the Los Angeles Clippers play.

Even with these new facilities, not all of Inglewood’s businesses have reaped the economic benefits, with some in the city’s downtown struggling to stay afloat and attract customers.

Now the prospect of the Olympics has some who live in the community concerned that they will be faced with the worst snarling traffic, congestion and noise during the Games while being priced out attending themselves.

“We shouldn’t just have to bear all of the burden of the Olympics, we should be able to participate,” Inglewood native Yolanda Davidson told CBS LA.