By AFP
The organising committee for the Los Angeles Olympics says some deals are already in place for the 2028 Games.
Organisers of the Los Angeles Olympics will sell naming rights for a handful of its venues in deals expected to bring multiple millions of dollars to the 2028 Games while breaking down the International Olympic Committee’s long-sacrosanct policy of keeping brand names off its arenas and stadiums.
The organising committee announced the landmark deal Thursday, saying contracts were already in place with two of its founding partners – Honda, which already has naming rights for the arena in Anaheim that will host volleyball, and Comcast, which will have its name on the temporary venue hosting squash.
LA28 chairman and CEO Casey Wasserman said revenue from the deals goes above what’s in LA’s current $6.9bn budget.
He portrayed the deal as the sort of paradigm-shifting arrangement that Los Angeles needs more than other host cities because, as is typical for American-hosted Olympics, the core cost of these Games is not backed by government funding.
“We’re a private enterprise responsible for delivering these games,” Wasserman said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s my job to push. That doesn’t mean we’re going to win every time we push, but it’s our job to always push because our context is pretty unique.”
Wasserman said he also spent time explaining to IOC members how arena and stadium names are part of the lexicon in US sports.
“People know ‘Crypto’ as ‘Crypto,’ they don’t know it as ‘the gymnastics arena downtown,’” Wasserman said of the home of the Lakers, Crypto.com Arena, which will host gymnastics and boxing in 2028.
Rights for up to 19 temporary venues could be available. The IOC’s biggest sponsors – called TOP sponsors – will have the first chance to get in on the deals. Wasserman said no venues will be renamed – so, for instance, if organisers do not reach a deal with SoFi (opening and closing ceremonies, swimming) or Intuit (basketball), no other sponsor can put its name on the arena.
Not included in this new arrangement are the LA Coliseum, Rose Bowl and Dodger Stadium, some of the most iconic venues in a city that hosted the Games in 1932 and 1984. Organisers said IOC rules that forbid advertising on the field of play will still apply.
The deal adds to a growing list of accommodations pushed through for Los Angeles, which is once again poised to reshape the Olympic brand, much the way it did in 1984
