LOS ANGELES — LA28 and International Olympic Committee members on Thursday tried to downplay friction between the organizing committee and the Los Angeles City Council and LA28 and the city’s failure to reach a critical agreement to determine compensation to the city for extra services related to the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic more than eight months past the deal’s deadline.
IOC vice president Nicole Hoevertsz, chair of the IOC coordination commission, speaking at the conclusion of meetings between the coordination commission and LA28 said she was “amazed by the progress” LA28 has made in preparing for the Games and securing corporate sponsorship. LA28 chair Casey Wasserman said the local organizing committee has secured more than $2 billion in “contracted revenue” surpassing, with more than two years until the opening of the 2028 Games, the total corporate sponsorship revenue for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
“A historic milestone that reflects the confidence the world-leading brands have played in these Games,” Wasserman said.
The meetings this week, Hoevertsz said, gave the IOC “great confidence.”
“The team is ready,” Hoevertsz said, referring to LA28. “The Games are on track, and the Games are in safe hands of a very qualified and very capable team.”
But Hoevertsz’s confidence in LA28 is not shared by city council members and other top city officials who in recent weeks and months have become increasingly critical of what they describe as LA28’s lack of transparency, its failure to be responsive to council questions and concerns, filibustering by the organization’s CEO when appearing before the council or the council’s ad hoc committee on the Olympic and Paralympic Games and other stalling tactics on major issues.
An Enhanced City Resources Master Agreement (ECRMA) between LA28 and the city was supposed to be completed by last Oct. 1. The ECRMA will determine which beyond “normal and customary” city services such as police, transportation, and sanitation LA28 will compensate the city for. Eight months later, a deal still hasn’t been reached, leading to mounting concerns and frustrations among city council members.
But LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said, “I wouldn’t characterize it as delayed, and I wouldn’t characterize it as late. We are in really good conversation from the city about the ECR.
“We will reach agreement. I’m very confident with that,” Hoover continued. “I think we’re really close, and I don’t think it’s anything that we’re holding up. I don’t think it’s anything the city is holding up. You know, the city’s got a lot of things going on as well, you know, beyond just the Olympics that are coming in 2028. And so we respect that, and we’re having a healthy dialog with members of city council, as well as, you know, our city family, and I think you’ll see something moving pretty soon.”
City council members, however, view the absence of an ECRMA as characteristic of LA28’s lack of transparency and dismissiveness toward the council.
“There’s only growing momentum from colleagues that are also sharing their concerns about it, and LA28 just has to step up,” council member Monica Rodriguez said in an interview with the Southern California News Group last month. “There’s no way around it anymore. They can’t dance around it anymore, they’re running out of time, but there’s going to be a point where it’s just push is going to come to shove, and it’s not going to be pretty. So they need to be responsive to the concerns that we’re raising in a real way, and stop slow-walking the ECRMA.”
The IOC commission met with Paul Krekorian, a former city council president who was appointed by Mayor Karen Bass as executive director of the Office of Major Events in December 2024. Krekorian has been criticized by council members for not keeping them up to date on talks with LA28 and the IOC. The commission also met with Joanne Kim, the chief of staff to city council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson, said Hoevertsz,
“I think that it will not surprise you to know that we respect the local structures and the city council for what they have to do,” Hoevertsz said.
“We work together and we have close contact with Paul Krekorian. He was, he was with us more and more engaging during this week, and we a very open communication with (the city) to understand where their frustration is, but on the other hand, we know that this is the local politics, and we look forward to organizing the Games of the whole world. … But we will, of course, not get involved in that local politics, because that’s something we cannot do.”
Hoover declined to disclose how much of a 24% surcharge on Olympic tickets goes back to LA28.
Los Angeles enacted a special 6% municipal tax on all ticket sales for the 1984 Olympic Games. That surcharge, along with a hotel tax increase, was used to fund local public services, host city obligations, and security costs associated with the event.
Councilmember Katy Young Yaroslavsky said recently that the council “had a lot of conversation” about placing a $1 Olympic ticket tax on the ballot for the June election but declined to do so after LA28 officials stressed the importance of keeping “tickets affordable.”
Tickets for the 2028 Games come with a 24% surcharge. In an April 14 council meeting, Young Yaroslavsky asked Hoover “what percentage of that 24% is coming back to LA28 because I feel like we were misled when we were having conversations about that ticket tax.”
“I don’t know,” Hoover told the council member, adding that he would have to get back to her.
More than a month later, Young Yaroslavsky still hadn’t heard back from Hoover, a spokesman for the council member said.
“We have a contractual agreement with our providers, and so I’m not, I can’t disclose like all of the details to it, but I think our ticket fee, and Casey may have some thoughts on it as well, but our ticket fee is consistent with industry standards,” Hoover said on Thursday. “We’re not hiding anything. When you check out, you see all of the fees that are applied.”