Los Angeles has found a new source of revenue to help fund the 2028 Olympics: charging companies extra to keep their naming rights on sports venues during the Summer Games.
Until now, the International Olympic Committee has required stadiums with naming rights deals to use more generic names during the Games.
But LA28, the city’s Olympic organizing committee, is striking deals with big companies to pay to keep or add their names to Olympic venues in Southern California.
On Friday, Intuit announced a sponsorship deal that will retain its name on Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, during the Olympics. Honda announced in August that it would pay to keep its name on Honda Center, home of the Anaheim Ducks, when the arena holds volleyball tournaments during the Games. Comcast will sponsor a temporary squash center at Universal Studios for the Olympics.
Paul Krekorian, the executive director of major events for Los Angeles, said that the new naming rights deals help ensure the “financial responsibility” of hosting the Games. The Los Angeles Games are expected to cost nearly $7 billion.
“As the host city, Los Angeles has a strong interest in ensuring the success of the Games while also protecting our taxpayers,” Mr. Krekorian said. “With LA28’s revenue already ahead of pace, and incredibly strong enthusiasm building toward 2028, I’m confident these Games will be a financial success and leave tremendous benefits for Angelenos for generations to come.”
Los Angeles was also an innovator in raising money the last time it hosted the Olympics, in 1984. At that time, it struck deals with a smaller number of big sponsors to give more money to the Games, raising $123 million. The model was adopted for future Games, and it is now a key source of funding for host cities, the I.O.C. says.
Casey Wasserman, the chairman of LA28, lauded the Intuit partnership in a statement. He has previously said that he hoped the new naming rights arrangements, currently a pilot project, would help build a new commercial model for the Olympics.
Intuit, which owns TurboTax, Credit Karma and QuickBooks, did not disclose how much it would pay to retain the naming rights. The Intuit Dome, which has a capacity of 18,000 people, will host basketball in the 2028 Games. As part of its sponsorship deal with LA28 and Team U.S.A., Intuit said it would help create opportunities for local businesses to become suppliers for the Games.
Honda and Comcast also did not disclose terms of their deals.
Had the Olympics decided not to break from its longstanding tradition of stripping naming rights, the Intuit Dome would have been temporarily renamed the Inglewood Dome during the 2028 Games.
When LA28 announced the naming rights deal with Honda, it said that the new strategy would support “the largest commercial revenue raise in sports.”
In addition to asking existing companies to pay to retain naming rights, LA28 said that as many as 19 temporary venues could also take on the name of a corporate partner.
“What this, I think, does is allows L.A. to be a little more creative in terms of the range of places they’re going to try to get money from to sponsor the Olympics,” said Matthew Burbank, a University of Utah political science professor who has written about the Olympics.
The practice of temporarily shedding corporate naming rights has been longstanding during the Olympic Games in other host cities. For example, during the 2012 Games in London, the O2 arena, named after the British telecommunications company, was renamed the North Greenwich Arena.
Other international events, such as the FIFA World Cup, have followed similar policies. When the World Cup comes to Southern California in 2026, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood will be temporarily renamed Los Angeles Stadium.
Los Angeles also broke tradition when it hosted the 1984 Olympic Games. That year, the Olympics tried a new financial model that allowed a limited number of companies to become official sponsors of the Games, a change from previous years when the Games had many small sponsors.
“In ’84, the I.O.C., in all honesty, was quite skeptical that this model was going to work,” Mr. Burbank said. “They were very strategic in how they went about doing it, and as a result of that, the I.O.C. essentially said, ‘Hey, that worked. We’re going to adopt this.’”
The 1984 Games were able to turn a profit and produced a surplus, said Mr. Krekorian, the executive director of major Los Angeles events. That money is still being used to finance youth sports programs in Los Angeles.
It is unclear whether the corporate sponsors of other venues also plan to retain naming rights during the 2028 Olympics. Crypto.com Arena, home to the Los Angeles Lakers, Sparks and Kings, did not respond to a request for comment. The arena will host artistic and trampoline gymnastics, boxing and wheelchair basketball during the Games.
Dignity Health Sports Park, home of the L.A. Galaxy in Carson, Calif., also did not respond to a request for comment. The soccer stadium will host archery and rugby sevens.
The I.O.C.’s willingness to go along with a new approach may be a concession to reality as much as a money-raising opportunity. It’s not clear that residents of Los Angeles would call well-known sports venues by new names just because Olympic organizers told them to. For example, Many residents still refer to Crypto.com Arena as the Staples Center, which was the longtime name of the arena until the naming rights changed in 2021.
“It’s not uncommon,” Mr. Burbank said. “People get used to calling it a certain thing.”
Jesus Jiménez is a Times reporter covering Southern California.
The post Want Your Company’s Name on an Olympic Arena? L.A. Has a Price for That. appeared first on New York Times.
