LOS ANGELES — The 2028 Olympic Games will come with a $6.9 billion price tag according to a revised budget released by LA 2028, the local organizing committee, Tuesday.
KPMG, the global consulting firm, will present a budget report to the Los Angeles City Council later this week that still shows the privately funded Games continue to project a balanced budget. While the new cost of Los Angeles third Olympic Games is up from the $5.3 billion that was part of a financial plan the City Council approved in 2017 the new figure is adjusted to real 2028 dollars using a 1.9 percent inflation rate.
Even at $6.9 billion the Los Angeles Games are projected to have the lowest operating budget for any Olympics since Turin hosted the 2006 Winter Games ($700 million) and the smallest for a Summer Games since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta ($1.7 billion).
“Our budget is privately funded, realistic and fiscally conservative,” LA 2028 Chairperson Casey Wasserman said. “We are redefining what it means to host a successful Games and look forward to planning and hosting an amazing experience that will make our community proud.”
The budget dedicates $160 million to youth sports in Los Angeles and Wasserman said the Games venue plan remains unchanged from the one the International Olympic Committee approved in awarding the Games to the city in 2017.
“Nothing changed,” Wasserman said. “Were operating for four more years and we are investing $160 million into youth sports in the city of Los Angeles and thats it. Nothing else has changed.”
The adjusted budget also lists $615.9 million for contingencies, including a city council mandated $270 million fund for cost overruns, up from $250 million in the 2017 budget.
The KPMG budget review, paid for by the organizing committee, was a condition of an agreement between LA 2024 and the city.
The budget continues to reflect LA 2028s reliance on venues and infrastructure that are already in place or previously funded allowing the organizing committee to avoid the construction costs have led to massive cost overruns for recent Games.
“Were not hiring people to manage construction and development,” Wasserman said. “We hire people who can generate revenue and create the success that we project that were going to have.”
LA 2028 will receive $2 billion from the IOC, up from $1.8 billion listed in the 2017 budget. The IOC will have a direct contribution of $898 million. Another $637 million will come from top IOC corporate sponsors.
LA 2028 projects $2.5 billion in domestic sponsorship and $1.9 billion in ticketing and hospitality.
NBC Universal and LA 2028 announced an agreement earlier this month in which the media company and organizing committee will sell media and sponsorship deals in tandem starting in 2021.
“People are excited about the opportunity to bring the Olympics back to the United States for the first time in a generation and I think the approach, the set of assets we are going to market with have been met with great enthusiasm and I think well be public with some very exciting results here over the summer time,” Wasserman said. “But I would say that with our relationship with NBC is a great first validation about how excited the marketplace is about the opportunity.”
