Los Angeles businesses and nonprofits have been clamoring for a way to benefit from the massive influx of fans and cash they expect from the 2028 Summer Olympics. Now some of them will get a chance to manufacture and sell Olympic-branded merchandise.
The Olympic organizing committee, LA28, will announce the Made for Two-Eight licensing program Tuesday — and its first partner will be Homeboy Industries, the nonprofit that operates what it describes as the largest gang intervention program in the world.
Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery will make T-shirts featuring the Olympic torch, Homeboy and the official LA28 logo, based on a design by Fabian Debora, who leads the nonprofit’s Art Academy. The torch imagery is meant to highlight the upcoming Olympics and the 1984 L.A. Games, in which Homeboy’s founder, Father Greg Boyle, carried the Olympic torch.
LA28 plans to announce partnerships with a number of other local entities that will make a wide variety of items, such as stationery, toys, hats, magnets, candles and pet accessories.
The Made for Two-Eight program will first partner with manufacturers based in the city of Los Angeles before expanding to include the rest of L.A. County. Los Angeles is the home to more venues than any other city and whose government serves as a financial guarantor of the Games.
“With this partnership with LA28, we’re essentially announcing to Los Angeles and the world that our community is as deserving to participate in an event like the Olympics as any other community,” said Steve Delgado, co-chief executive of Homeboy Industries. “We believe in two things: that everybody’s capable and that we belong to each other. That’s been our message for 40 years and it’s a message for the modern Olympiad too.”
Homeboy, which provides jobsfor current and former gang members, plans to sell the T-shirts at its headquarters near Chinatown and at its diners at L.A. City Hall, Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital and Terminal 2 at Los Angeles International Airport, along with its online portal shophomeboy.com. LA28 also will have the right to sell the shirts through its merchandising operation.
LA28 executives said they will find a T-shirt maker, probably near downtown or East Los Angeles, to produce the blank T-shirts, which will then be silk-screened at the Homeboy plant in the warehouse district near the Los Angeles River.
LA28 and Homeboy didn’t reveal the terms of their deal, but they said the Olympic organizing group will receive a royalty payment for each T-shirt sold, with profit going to Homeboy to support its array of programs including tattoo removal, counseling and job training.
Homeboy is expected to be the first of many local partners to ink licensing deals to use the local Olympic committee’s symbol — LA28 and the Olympic rings — on their products.
Other businesses and nonprofits interested in the licensing program must apply through the Regional Alliance Marketplace for Procurement at RAMPLA.org, between Oct. 20 and February 2027. Those granted licensing agreements will be announced in July 2027.
“Our goal from day one has been to ensure the economic benefits of the Games reach our local neighborhoods,” Reynold Hoover, LA28’s CEO, said in a statement.
“Fans will find products at our retail locations that were designed, sourced and made in Los Angeles,” Peter Zeytoonjian, LA28’s senior vice president of consumer products, said in a statement. “And local makers will gain a new channel to reach customers from around the world.”
The massive merchandising push around the 2028 Summer Olympics will also include global brands such as Nike and Ralph Lauren. “The goal here is to provide local businesses the ability to tap into the Olympics,” Zeytoonjian said, “but also give fans the ability to have different varieties of products they can select from.”
Homeboy’s Delgado said the nonprofit may later offer different T-shirt designs, or expand into mugs and other types of merchandise. Zeytoonjian said LA28 wants to have the program for local manufacturers firmly in place by the summer of 2027 so that its partners have at least a full year to market the products before the Summer Olympics open in July of 2028.
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