An Olympic footprint that will stretch from Trestles Beach just south of San Clemente to the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area and San Fernando Valley in the summer of 2028 will also include two of the region’s most iconic sports venues, Dodger Stadium and Santa Anita Park.
Dodger Stadium will host the 2028 Olympic Games baseball competition while Santa Anita will be the home of the equestrian events, LA28 announced Tuesday in the latest installment of the local organizing committee’s ever-changing venue plan.
While LA28’s most recent venue plan also includes another iconic locale Trestles, the only Olympic venue ever immortalized by the Beach Boys, the plan does not include another postcard setting, beach volleyball against the backdrop of the Santa Monica Pier, that was one of LA28’s selling points to the International Olympic Committee during its campaign to land a third Olympic Games for Los Angeles.
Instead Long Beach’s Alamitos Beach will be the site of the beach volleyball competition. Meanwhile, LA28 has relocated triathlon from Long Beach to Venice Beach, which will also host the starts of the marathon running and cycling road race courses.
LA28 said in a statement Tuesday that “the courses and finishes for both the Marathon and Cycling Road will be confirmed and announced at a later date.”
The Honda Center, home of the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks, will host the Olympic indoor volleyball competition, although officials for FIVB, the sport’s international governing body, had assessed other potential venue options in recent weeks.
The IOC executive board approved LA28’s venue masterplan earlier this month after the plan had received the support of the international federations governing the various Olympic sports. The 2028 Games (July 14-30) will host 10,500 athletes in 31 sports.
“We’ve promised the world an incredible Olympic Games and today we’re proud to share the plan that will make it happen,” LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said in a statement. “Los Angeles is the epicenter of sports, culture and entertainment, and every venue selected for the 2028 Games will provide athletes and fans the best possible experience. The 2028 Olympic venue plan invites communities from across the region to celebrate the Games coming to their backyard with the most exciting sports staged at some of the world’s top-tier existing stadiums and arenas, famous beaches and purpose-built temporary structures.”
The latest LA28 plan doesn’t have the bombshell effect as last summer’s announcement where the local organizing committee, in an unprecedented move, shifted track and field to the opening week of the Games and swimming, traditionally held in the first week, to the second week in order to accommodate the opening ceremony at SoFi Stadium. That version of the venue plan, which also included the move of swimming to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, with a configuration of 38,000 available seats (it seats 70,000-plus for NFL games) creating the largest swimming venue in Olympic history, would result in $156 million in combined savings and revenue increases, LA28 chair Casey Wasserman said at the time. Swimming for the 2028 Games was originally supposed to be held at a 17,500-seat temporary stadium. The updated plan mirrors last year’s Olympic swimming trials held at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Field, home of the NFL’s Colts.
Still the most recent venue plan included some last minute surprises.
The equestrian competition originally slated for the Sepulveda Basin was moved to Galway Downs in the Temecula Valley last summer. LA28 told the LA City Council last year that the move to Galway Downs would generate a $26 million projected gain over what holding the event in the Sepulveda Basin would have generated. As recently as last week, Galway Downs had expected to host equestrian events.
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LA28 told Santa Monica officials April 4 that it had decided to hold the beach volleyball competition elsewhere.
A 12,000-seat beach volleyball stadium in the self-proclaimed birthplace of the beach game with the iconic Santa Monica Pier in the background was one of the cornerstones of an original venue plan.
But negotiations between LA28 and Santa Monica had stalled for several months because of city concerns about the financial impact on the city during its peak tourist season. A financial impact study commissioned by Santa Monica city officials found that while hosting the Olympic beach volleyball competition would generate $14.09 million in revenue, the city would also incur $15.54 million in expenses, leaving the city with a $1.45 million deficit. That same study found that if Santa Monica didn’t host the beach competition it would still generate $11.3 million from tourism against $650,000 in expenses for a profit of $10.65 million.
“Taken together, these findings suggest that choosing to host the Olympic beach volleyball competition translates to a net loss of roughly $2.10 million to the City,” the study said.
