Most tickets to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics cost hundreds of dollars, and the most coveted seats at dozens of high-profile events cost more than $1,000, according to fans who won the opportunity to purchase tickets in LA28 presales.
LA28 organizers have not publicly released a full price catalog, but fans have compiled spreadsheets with a complete list of prices for all 800-plus ticketed events. The Athletic, via screenshots and screen recordings, has independently confirmed many of the prices, which range from $28 (for the least desirable seats at lower-profile events) to $5,519 (for a lower-level seat at the opening ceremony).
The prices, across the board, are by far the highest in Olympic history. In many cases, tickets to LA28 are more than twice as expensive as an equivalent ticket at the 2024 Paris Olympics — whose prices sparked controversy in France.
The L.A. organizing committee’s justification is similar to the one that guided FIFA’s 2026 World Cup approach. “Pricing is rooted in heavy analytics and extensive market demand research around entertainment and live sports in the U.S.,” an LA28 spokesperson told The Athletic. In other words, Americans are accustomed to paying a lot for sports tickets.
Beyond the opening and closing ceremonies, the single most expensive sporting event at the 2028 Games is the men’s basketball final. The top two ticket categories are reserved entirely for hospitality package buyers, who get courtside seats. A Category C seat — in the lower bowl along the sideline or in a corner — costs $3,350.
Non-hospitality seating prices at the Intuit Dome, host of basketball, range from $28 (Category H) in prelims to over $3,500 (Category C) for the men’s final. (Screenshot from LA28 ticket site)
The most expensive sports overall are gymnastics and athletics (known in the U.S. as track and field). The best non-hospitality seats at a women’s gymnastics final — all-around, team or apparatus finals — or at a track and field evening session cost $2,461.
Tickets then get progressively cheaper in categories farther away from the floor or field. At a gymnastics final, a second-level seat along the sideline or corner of DTLA Arena (usually known as Crypto.com Arena, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers) is $1,973. A second-level endline seat costs $1,234. The upper-deck tickets are $732, $384, $236 or $104.
For a track final at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, tickets in Category B through I range from $2,047 down to $104.
A representative sample of prices observed across all 50-plus sports that will feature at the L.A. Games is in a table at the bottom of this article.
Ticket prices vary by category, round and event
Like at World Cups and past Olympics, organizers are selling tickets by category rather than by section and row. The categories correspond to areas of each venue, per color-coded maps shown to buyers on the ticketing portal.
Seating prices for track and field at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum range from just over $60 (Category H) to over $2,400 (Category A). (Screenshot from LA28 ticket site.)
Unlike FIFA’s maps for the 2026 World Cup, the LA28 maps do not show specific section numbers — which gives organizers broad discretion when they ultimately convert tickets to specific seats in specific sections closer to the Games.
Tickets are significantly cheaper for less popular sports. The LA28 organizing committee has said that 1 million tickets (out of roughly 10.5 million tickets in total) will be sold for $28, and that “nearly 50 percent” of tickets will cost less than $200.
Many of those tickets, though, have already been purchased, according to LA28 officials. Half of the $28 tickets were bought during a “locals” presale in April. In that April sales phase and again in a second sales phase that opened Wednesday, the cheaper tickets for many events were gone within a few hours, often leaving only Categories A and B available to fans who are randomly selected for the chance to buy over the coming weeks.
Those Category A tickets, the best non-hospitality seats at each venue, cost more than $300 for around 576 of the nearly 850 events, according to the price lists compiled by fans and largely verified by The Athletic. (The crowdsourced spreadsheets, created by Alain Rosas, Shelby Brown and others, are mostly but not entirely accurate.)
Organizers have said that only “about 5 percent” of tickets cost upwards of $1,000, but the median event — a group-stage soccer match in Nashville — is still plenty expensive. Tickets to those soccer matches, men’s or women’s, cost $398 in Category A, $289 in Category B, $200 in Category C, $146 in Category D, $105 in Category E and $28 in Category F.
The prices are not too dissimilar from what FIFA initially charged for some group-stage matches at the 2026 World Cup. (Men’s soccer at the Olympics is a mostly-under-23 competition and significantly less prestigious than the World Cup. One factor likely driving up Olympic prices is that the stadiums being used in Nashville, Columbus, St. Louis, New York, San Jose and San Diego are two or three times smaller than most 2026 World Cup venues, which means supply is more limited.)
Unlike FIFA, which raised many prices from one sales phase to the next, the LA28 spokesperson confirmed to The Athletic that Olympic prices have not changed since tickets first went on sale in April. (The only slight adjustments, most or all of them pertaining to basketball games or Columbus soccer matches, were due to incorrect calculations of local tax back in April. Some early buyers have received small refunds.)
All of the prices seen by fans and reported here include tax and a 24 percent “service fee” that has angered some fans. LA28 spokespeople say it “align(s) with standard industry practices for ticketing live events in the U.S. Service fees cover the costs of securely processing and delivering tickets, such as ticketing platform development, customer service, payment processing, fulfillment and distribution.”
The LA28 ticketing process
Thus far, tickets have only been available to fans who registered and were randomly selected for presales.
The organizing committee said earlier this week that 12 million people have registered. An undisclosed number got the chance to buy during an initial sales phase in April, when 4 million tickets were sold. Another wave was selected for a “Visa Presale” — where purchases must be made with a Visa card — this week, and yet another wave will be notified on Aug. 6 or 7 ahead of a sales window from Aug. 10-20.
Fans are limited to buying 12 tickets across all events, with the exception of soccer, which is subject to its own separate 12-ticket limit.
It’s unclear if there will be a third lottery phase, where access to tickets is determined by random chance, or if the remaining tickets will be put on sale to the general public just like most U.S. sports tickets are.
Either way, many fans will have to turn to the secondary market. LA28 has said it will launch a “verified ticket resale network” sometime in 2027.
Paralympic tickets will also go on sale in 2027.
LA28 Olympics ticket prices for every sport
Although the top prices have shocked some fans, most tickets cost a few hundred dollars or less. An LA28 spokesperson shared with The Athletic a breakdown of the average ticket price in each event zone. In Anaheim, for example, which will host all volleyball matches, LA28 says the average ticket costs $243. In Carson, which will host tennis, rugby sevens, archery, track cycling and field hockey, the average price is $187.
In Downtown Los Angeles, home to boxing, baseball, fencing, gymnastics (artistic and trampoline), judo, taekwondo, table tennis, weightlifting and wrestling, the average ticket costs $350, according to the breakdown.
In Exposition Park, the site of track and field, badminton, flag football, rhythmic gymnastics, lacrosse and the closing ceremony, the average cost is $540.
In Long Beach, which will host over 150 ticketed events spanning handball, sport climbing, canoe sprint, open water swimming, rowing, sailing, artistic swimming, beach volleyball, water polo and shooting, the average is $155.
The table below is a more extensive list of prices. It includes one or a few event types per sport; the most expensive ticket to that event; and the second-cheapest. (We chose “second-cheapest” because it is a more accurate representation of what might be available to the vast majority of fans, with the $28 tickets mostly gone. Prices generally rise progressively from that price point to the top ticket in middle categories.)
Prices have been confirmed by The Athletic unless denoted with an asterisk, which indicates they’ve been reported by fans but not independently confirmed.
The letter in parentheses in the last column is the category of the second-cheapest ticket. In other words, a “G” indicates that there are eight ticket categories for the event and this is the seventh; a “B” indicates there are three categories; “cheapest” means that there are only two categories and the price listed is the second.
SportEventMost expensive2nd-cheapest
Opening ceremony
$5,519
$490 (G)
Closing ceremony
$4,961
$217 (G)
Men’s basketball
Final
$3,350
$628 (G)
Men’s basketball
Group phase
$448
$88 (G)
Women’s basketball
Final
$1,118
$219 (G)
Women’s basketball
Group phase
$262
$51 (G)
Track and field
Finals
$2,461
$186 (H)
Track and field
Prelims
$1,036
$62 (H)
Gymnastics
Women’s finals
$2,461
$236 (F)
Gymnastics
Men’s finals
$2,264
$211 (F)
Gymnastics
Women’s qualification
$1,116
$112 (F)
Gymnastics
Men’s qualification
$837
$74 (F)
Swimming
Finals
$1,860
$186 (G)
Swimming
Prelims
$1,116
$93 (G)
Baseball
Final
$1,718
$87 (I)
Baseball
Opening round
$775
$43 (I)
Softball
Final
$1,047
$223 (C)
Softball
Preliminary round
$554
$122 (C)
Soccer
Final
$1,305
$281 (E)
Soccer
Group stage^
$360
$93 (E)
Boxing
Finals
$1,215
$198 (D)
Boxing
Early rounds
$440*
$211 (B)
Beach volleyball
Final
$1,054
$279 (C)
Beach volleyball
Prelims
$558
$149 (C)
Volleyball
Final
$961
$403 (C)
Volleyball
Prelims
$490
$205 (C)
Tennis
Finals (Center Court)
$992
$329 (C)
Tennis
Semis/QFs (Court 1)
$533*
$285* (B)
Tennis
Early rounds (Court 2)
$186*
$81 (cheapest)
Tennis
First round (Court 3-11)
$28
Archery
Finals
$862
$242 (C)
Archery
Prelims
$515
$136 (C)
Diving
Finals
$682
$312 (C)
Diving
Prelims
$496*
$164 (C)
3×3 basketball
Finals
$682*
$459 (B)
3×3 basketball
Pool play
$366
$155 (B)
Rhythmic gymnastics
Finals
$682*
$248 (C)
Rhythmic gymnastics
Qualification
$527*
$130 (C)
Trampoline gymnastics
$682*
$205 (C)
Skateboarding
Finals
$682
$229 (C)
Skateboarding
Prelims
$527*
$124 (C)
Wrestling
Finals
$682
$155 (C)
Wrestling
Early rounds
$397*
$87 (C)
Artistic swimming
Finals
$626*
$229 (C)
Artistic swimming
Technical
$329*
$118 (C)
Fencing
Medal rounds
$577*
$211 (C)
Fencing
Early rounds
$304*
$112 (C)
Badminton
Finals
$571*
$260 (C)
Badminton
Group stage
$304
$136 (C)
Table tennis
Finals
$571*
$260 (C)
Table tennis
Early rounds
$304*
$136 (C)
Squash
Finals
$564
$248 (C)
Squash
First round
$298
$130 (C)
BMX
Finals
$558
$229 (C)
BMX
Park qualification
$298*
$118 (C)
Cycling (track)
Finals
$558
$397 (B)
Cycling (track)
Qualifying
$298*
$211 (B)
Flag football
Men’s medal games
$558*
$223 (C)
Flag football
Women’s medal games
$496*
$180 (C)
Flag football
Preliminaries
$260
$93 (C)
Weightlifting
Finals (evening)
$558*
$322 (B)
Weightlifting
Finals (afternoon)
$440*
$211 (B)
Canoe slalom
Finals
$554
$209 (C)
Canoe slalom
Heats
$291*
$115 (C)
Canoe sprint
Finals
$509
$192 (C)
Canoe sprint
Early rounds
$285
$112 (C)
Equestrian
Finals
$553
$206 (C)
Equestrian
Qualifiers
$293
$107 (C)
Men’s cricket
Final
$527
$192 (C)
Men’s cricket
First round
$285
$105 (C)
Women’s cricket
Final
$478
$174 (C)
Women’s cricket
First round
$254
$93 (C)
Field hockey
Final
$527
$180 (C)
Field hockey
Pool play
$279
$93 (C)
Taekwondo
Medal rounds
$490
$180 (C)
Taekwondo
Early rounds
$260
$93 (C)
Rugby sevens
Finals
$478
$205 (C)
Rugby sevens
Pool play
$254
$112 (C)
Water polo
Final
$478*
$180 (C)
Water polo
Preliminary round
$248
$93 (C)
Judo
Medal rounds
$471*
$180 (C)
Judo
Early rounds
$248*
$93 (C)
Lacrosse
Finals
$471*
$174 (C)
Lacrosse
Qualifying round
$248
$93 (C)
Sport climbing
Finals
$465*
$192 (C)
Sport climbing
Semifinals
$304
$130 (C)
Handball
Final
$459
$136 (C)
Handball
Preliminary round
$242
$74 (C)
Modern pentathlon
Finals
$447*
$186 (C)
Modern pentathlon
Semifinals
$291*
$124 (C)
Golf
Final rounds
$428
$161 (cheapest)
Golf
Early rounds
$28*
Rowing
Finals
$229
$93 (cheapest)
Rowing
Heats
$124
$28 (cheapest)
Open water swimming
$124*
$28 (cheapest)
Mountain biking
$124
$28 (cheapest)
Triathlon
$124
$28 (cheapest)
Sailing
Finals
$104
Sailing
Prelims
$28
Shooting
Finals
$329
$104 (cheapest)
Shooting
Qualification
$104
$28 (cheapest)
Surfing
Finals
$104
Surfing
Prelims
$28
All prices have been rounded to the nearest dollar.
^Soccer prices vary from city to city. The prices listed are the cheapest for games in Columbus.
^^In some sports and rounds, prime-time sessions are slightly more expensive than afternoon or morning sessions. Where that was the case, we listed the cheaper price.