It doesn’t matter how much of an athlete—active or couch potato—you are: the Olympic Games are one of those events you go to once in a lifetime. So the residents of Los Angeles looked very happy when, at the end of 2025, they learned that they would have preferential access to ticket sales for their third Games, those in the summer of 2028. At the beginning of January, registration began, after checking the zip code. We had to wait until the end of March, when the purchasing period would open. Well, the wait is over. And hope. Buying tickets for the Games has been a common civic frustration. And that in a city accustomed to both waiting in long lines and paying huge amounts of money for everything, from matcha tea to a Taylor Swift concert. The problems started even before purchasing. Some residents received confirmation emails, others did not, the reason was unclear. Later, it was learned that there was a delay of several days, making appointments to buy on different days. Those who did not have that email were able to enter into a subsequent purchase (spoiler: there was nothing left there). According to what the LA28 office—that’s what it calls itself—reports to EL PAIS, more than five million people registered for the purchase.
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The emails gave an appointment to purchase for 48 hours, up to 12 tickets in total, four per event. Once in their session, the user could choose their favorite sports, send them to their shopping cart and, in just 30 minutes, decide the area (there are no assigned seats, for now) and price and pay. The sale began on the afternoon of April 2, Maundy Thursday, with seats starting at $28. But few tasted these, only those who were lucky enough—it seems by chance—to get into the first purchasing rounds. Starting on Friday afternoon, everything got complicated. Angelenos found that those normal-price tickets had disappeared and were not being replaced. The others had stratospheric prices or simply did not exist. For the closing ceremony, only $5,000 tickets were left. For the opening, everything disappeared in minutes. In its day, the cheapest, a mirage, started at 328 dollars, rising, according to categories, to 5,500 (and passing through 500, 700, 1,000, 1,600, 2,600 and 3,900). There is no Angeleno who has managed to see them. The hopelessness went beyond the ceremonies. The tickets for the finals—gymnastics, soccer, athletics, tennis, men’s, women’s, mixed—disappeared with the first ones who bought. There were never more, after the first turns. On the website, the prices could continue to be seen; If there was anything left, it was in the highest categories: more than $600 for the women’s artistic swimming final, an hour south of the city; more than 1,300 the women’s or men’s soccer final, an hour north. Many preliminary phases were sold out or at very high prices. And social networks were filled with critical comments, complaining that it seems that access is only for the wealthiest. And then there is the question of taxes. Each of the entrances has a tax rate of 24%, which neighbors and the local press describe as abusive. EL PAÍS has contacted the organizers to find out the reason and destination of this tax. In response, they affirm that these “service fees,” as they call them, “conform to the usual practices of the ticket sales sector for live events in the United States,” and that they cover “the costs derived from safely processing and delivering tickets, such as the development of the sales platform, customer service, payment processing, order management and distribution.” Furthermore, they argue that the user knows the price with taxes from the beginning. But that does not justify that a quarter of the price, already high, is taxes. And by the way, whoever wants a paper ticket has to pay for it: almost 20 dollars per head per event. The comparisons do not leave Los Angeles in a good place either: in Paris 2024, it was easy to get tickets for less than 100 euros (including finals), and for the closing ceremony they cost just 220, purchased days in advance; 5% of the current ones. History repeats itself with the prices for the Soccer World Cup this summer. In Los Angeles, the cheapest category for the semifinals cost (although the price varied depending on the country of origin of each fan) about $1,000; for the final, 5,000. That’s the cheap ones: the most expensive ones are close to 11,000, rising month by month. Resale is impossible. A European football consumer association has even filed a formal complaint against FIFA for the prices. All of this is combined with the fact that the city is not even remotely prepared for an avalanche like that of the Olympic Games. A Deloitte report estimates about 15 million visitors in the 19 days of competition, with days with up to half a million visitors. With impossible distances, very limited public transport (not even the airport is well connected to the city), a limited hotel offer (about 100,000 rooms in total) and elections in six months that will turn everything upside down, chaos is seen in two years. The prices and lack of availability outrage Angelenos. The Games organization states that they will put up to one million tickets on sale for less than $30, and that two-thirds will cost less than $200. But if this was the best opportunity for the locals, what will the others be like? And what will neighbors or visitors be able to get that is cheap? We will have to wait a couple more years and, in the meantime, settle for watching a golf qualifier on a Thursday at nine in the morning for $28. You can consult other cards in this section here.
