Venues for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics will be permitted to sell naming rights, a first in the Games’ storied history.
LA28, the organizing committee for the upcoming Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) struck an agreement, which alleviates logistical headaches, cuts costs for the city and helps cover the budget for the Games but also continues the commercialization of an event the IOC has tried to protect over the years from corporate influence.
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It’s important to note, however, that the field of play will remain free of visible advertising.
“Our job is to push and our job is to do what’s best for the Olympics in Los Angeles,” LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman told the Los Angeles Times. “Our job in those conversations [with the IOC] was to explain why this was more than just about money. It was about experience and value and opportunity.”
Well-known venues such as SoFi Stadium and Crypto.com Arena will no longer have to adopt generic nicknames or remove existing signage for the Games. Notably, SoFi will host the opening and closing ceremonies along with swimming, and Crypto.com Arena will host gymnastics and boxing in 2028.
“People know ‘Crypto’ as ‘Crypto,’ they don’t know it as ‘the gymnastics arena downtown,’” Wasserman said, via The Associated Press, when discussing Crypto.com Arena, the full-time home of the Los Angeles Lakers, Sparks and Kings.
For those venues with pre-existing sponsorship names, the companies that currently own naming rights can retain those for the Olympics by signing on as a founding-level partner, according to the LA Times. If they don’t sign on, those venues will be renamed without a sponsor, per the LA Times’ report.
LA28 announced in a release Thursday that up to 19 temporary venues can carry naming rights, with members of The Olympic Partners program receiving first bidding opportunities.
Contracts are in place for two of them already: Comcast Squash Center at Universal Studios and Honda Center, the latter of which will keep its name for the Olympic volleyball competition in Anaheim.
The LA Coliseum, Rose Bowl and Dodger Stadium are not included in this new naming rights arrangement, according to the AP.
But the revenue raised from these deals will prove critical in backing what LA28 describes as a privately funded Games.
