Karen Bass, Mayor of Los Angeles, waves the Olympic flag as Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, applauds during the Closing Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Stade de France on August 11, 2024 in Paris, France.
Carl Recine | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images
After a successful 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, the bar has been set high for the next summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028, something key stakeholders in the event say the city will be ready for.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin at the CNBC x Boardroom’s Game Plan sports business event on Tuesday that what worries her is “what we need to do in our city to prepare” for the 2028 Games. However, he said that like the last time Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1984, he believes the city will not only improve to host the Games but will benefit once they are over.
This includes working on public transport. Bass said she hopes there will be “no cars in the venues” and that spectators will take public transport to the Games – a promise that will require investment in both bus and metro infrastructure, as well as working with other cities to borrow buses.
Bass said the city is also doing “everything it can to get the homeless off the streets,” including building more than 18,000 new units for the unsheltered population.
Bass said there will also be discussions with companies in Los Angeles about work schedules to shift employees to remote work during high-traffic times, as well as finding ways to move truck deliveries into the night, like what happened at the Games of 1984.
“I think there is a way to organize the area so that the traffic is less and more manageable,” Bass said.
LA 2028 President Casey Wasserman attended the Paris Games, an event he told Ross Sorkin “reminded people why they fall in love with the Olympics,” and an event he said organizers will try to support in Los Angeles.
While no new permanent venues will be built for the Los Angeles Games, for the first time in Olympic history, there are some challenges in capitalizing on all of the city’s landmarks in the way that Paris was able to showcase famous sites like the Eiffel Tower hosting beach volleyball nearby. Wasserman said Los Angeles got a taste of that with the Olympic Torch delivery ceremony, when Tom Cruise walked up to the Hollywood Sign and the Olympic Rings replaced the “OOs” on the sign — which Wasserman noted was done with CGI.
“This is obviously a longer, more complicated discussion,” Wasserman said of changing the Hollywood Sign for the Games. “But I think it’s a pretty spectacular opportunity if there was a way to do it.”
Actress Jessica Alba, who is on the Los Angeles 2028 board, said the Games will showcase all the different aspects of the city’s culture, from Hollywood to fashion and food, as “a global platform to showcase what they got.”
“LA is a central character,” Alba said. “We want him to be a key character during the Olympics.”
Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the US broadcast rights holder for all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.
