The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will have a ticket for $5,519 — the most expensive seat in Olympic history. That top price is for a lower-level seat at the opening ceremony. Fans who were given an early chance to buy tickets have shared the prices for over 800 events. The Athletic has verified many of these prices using screenshots and screen recordings.
The Los Angeles organizing committee has not yet published a full price list. However, fans have created detailed spreadsheets showing all the event prices. The 2028 Games are priced much higher than the 2024 Paris Olympics, where similar tickets cost less than half as much. LA28 officials said the pricing was based on market demand and sports ticket trends in the U.S. Americans, they argue, are used to paying high prices for live sports experiences.
The most expensive sporting events
Outside of the opening and closing ceremonies, the men’s basketball final is the most expensive sporting event at the Games. The top seats, courtside in Category A, are sold only as part of luxury hospitality packages. The best available seats for the general public are in Category C, and those cost $3,350. Gymnastics and track and field also have steep prices. The best non-hospitality seats at the women’s gymnastics finals cost $2,461. These are the top prices for those events.
Seat prices drop significantly as you move away from the field of play. For the gymnastics final at the DTLA Arena — usually called the Crypto.com Arena — a second-level seat along the sidelines costs $1,973. Upper-deck seats at the same event start at $732 and go down to as low as $104. Track and field events at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum also have a wide range of prices, with the best seats in Category B costing $2,047 and the least expensive tickets in Category I at $104.
Cheaper seats sell out quickly
The organizing committee has promised that one million tickets will be priced at $28, with nearly half of all tickets costing less than $200. In practice, however, these lower-cost tickets are vanishing quickly. Another round of sales that started recently followed the same pattern, with the cheapest options gone within hours. Only the more expensive seats remain for those randomly selected to buy in the next phase.
Out of the nearly 850 ticketed events, 576 offer the best non-hospitality seats for over $300. Despite the committee’s claim that only about 5 percent of tickets cost more than $1,000, the average event — a group-stage soccer match in Nashville — has top seats at $398. That price has surprised many fans. It’s a steep cost for what is essentially a preliminary round match.
The ticketing system follows a model used in past Olympics and the 2026 World Cup. Rather than selling by specific sections and rows, the LA28 organizers use a category system. Fans are shown color-coded maps that indicate seat locations, but without showing exact section numbers. This approach allows the organizing committee to assign final seat placements in the last weeks before the event, giving them flexibility but limiting fans' control over where they sit.
The spreadsheets showing these prices were compiled by fans and verified by The Athletic. They were created by Alain Rosas, Shelby Brown and others. While most of the data is accurate, some details might be incorrect. The ticket price lists provide a detailed look at how expensive the 2028 Games could be, and they confirm that the Games will be the most costly in Olympic history.
The LA28 team says it’s balancing ticket access for different groups. However, given the speed at which the lower-priced options sell out and the high median costs, it remains to be seen how accessible these events will be for the average fan.
