2028 Olympics in Los Angeles: What to expect from the Olympic Games in La La Land

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games have finally come to an end. After over two weeks of fantastic sporting performances by athletes from across the world, the French capital can have a nice lie in bed after putting on what has been a truly memorable show.

Now, the attention of the world turns to Los Angeles, the host city for the 2028 Olympic Games. The Paris 2024 closing ceremony showcased the handover of the Olympic duties from Europe to North America, and now the west coast city has four years to prepare for the party that is headed its way.

But what can we expect from LA28? Will they try to go above and beyond what we saw in Paris? We know we will see new sports added to the list, but what else?

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Casey Wasserman, president of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, told USA Today that his job is to “be the most authentically spectacular Games for L.A., not to try and out-Paris Paris in L.A.”

Wasserman headed the bid for Los Angeles to host the Olympics, and the city’s proposal beat Budapest, Hamburg, Rome and Paris.

“One of the reasons Paris has been so successful is they’ve been authentically French in every regard, and that’s why it works”, he added. “L.A. is a different city and so we have to be what you would expect and what you see and what people are used to seeing from big events in L.A.”

Paris opening ceremony ‘a very isolated experience’ for all

“In the Beijing opening ceremony, there were, whatever, 10,000 people banging drums. Then London does a great thing because it was authentically British, it had humour and fun and music and all this stuff and the Queen and Daniel Craig. Our job is not to compare but to be the best for L.A. I think it’s important not to get caught up in that, the same way London frankly didn’t get caught up in that.”

While talking about how LA will match Paris, he took time to praise how the French set up their “spectacular” opening show: “I give them a ton of credit. … Beautiful idea.”

However, Wasserman did admit that, in his opinion, something was lacking: “The way I describe it is the one thing it missed was shared experiences. So not just for the athletes, for the fans, you have the moment of, oh, Paul McCartney playing in London, everyone shared that moment at the same time, and here when it was coming down the river, you had your experience, but it was a very isolated experience for both the athletes and the fans. If you were on the river you saw what you saw but that’s all you saw.”

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“The energy that comes from a shared experience – Super Bowl halftime is the ultimate example, Super Bowl halftime being in the venue, everyone experiences it together,” he added. “I think that’s a really important thing to create that energy and I think it’s a really great opportunity for the athletes to feel that energy because it is the first night and that energy and that shared experience is pretty powerful.”

Los Angeles will become the third city in the world to host three Olympics when the Summer Games come to California from July 14 until July 30, 2028.