![\"LA28](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790593693_410_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nOrganizers of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles have given vague and sometimes incomplete annual reports to the city on details of their preparations for what has been described as the largest athletic event in the nation\u2019s history, records show.<\/p>\n
A review by The Times of five years of annual reports from LA28 shows that the organization appears at times to have curtailed the reporting requirements that are spelled out in its 2021 contract with Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
The private nonprofit organization\u2019s yearly reports haven\u2019t outlined progress on roughly two dozen venues around Greater Los Angeles. Nor have they included details about contracts LA28 signed with companies providing such services as security and preproduction work for the opening and closing ceremonies.<\/p>\n
The incomplete updates leave the city\u2019s taxpayers with less information than promised on matters such as who is winning business \u2014 and the attendant jobs and profits \u2014 from contracts that soared to $687 million in value last year. They also don\u2019t have as clear a picture on things like the progress on plans to install a running track at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and swimming pools inside SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.<\/p>\n
L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia demanded last month that LA28, the private nonprofit producing the Games, release a much more detailed accounting of its activities than it has in yearly reports to City Hall. He has asked for bank statements, more detailed revenue and expenditure accounting and other documents.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
LA28 Chairperson and President Casey Wasserman.<\/p>\n
(Allen J. Schaben\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Mejia said he is aware of LA28\u2019s assurances that robust ticket and sponsorship sales will ensure a healthy bottom line. LA28 has estimated the Summer Games will generate $2.6 billion in revenue from domestic sponsorships and $2.5 billion from ticket sales. <\/p>\n
Even so, Mejia wants more information to be sure that those reports are accurate, especially because the city previously agreed to help cover any deficit should the Games lose money. <\/p>\n
\u201cL.A. taxpayers need to know that LA28 is doing well. They want to make sure that those numbers are legit, which is why we\u2019re requesting more information,\u201d Mejia said in an interview. \u201cBecause if LA28 does not do well, then we as taxpayers, as the fiscal backstop, we\u2019re on the hook.\u201d<\/p>\n
The controller asked LA28 to make the additional disclosures by Monday. But the organization has given no indication that it intends to provide additional information.<\/p>\n
LA28 said it already provided the records required in the contract, noting that its previous annual reports had been accepted by the city. The group suggested some of the information that didn\u2019t appear in annual reports, such as copies of insurance policies, had been provided to the city \u201cdirectly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look forward to continuing to meet our obligations,\u201d Jacie Prieto Lopez, an LA28 spokesperson, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Mejia has been virtually alone in calling for more information from the Olympic organizers. Mayor Karen Bass and City Council members have accepted LA28\u2019s annual reports since 2021, asking some questions but not publicly pressing for all the details that The Times and Mejia have requested.<\/p>\n
The dispute over LA28 disclosures has its roots in a contract signed in 2021 by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti and LA28 Chairman Casey Wasserman, which was designed \u201cto provide a critical framework for how the [organizing committee] and the City will work together.\u201d The so-called Games Agreement laid out a \u201cshared set of values\u201d and called for an operating budget that would be \u201cprudent, realistic, and designed to protect taxpayers by mitigating financial risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a section called Transparency, the agreement mandated annual reports to the city that are supposed to include a range of disclosures. Among the requirements:<\/p>\n
\u2022 A list of all contracts of more than $1 million inked by LA28, including \u201cthe name, type, amount, term and purpose\u201d of the agreements. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Copies of all purchased insurance policies to the city, including the \u201ccoverage amounts contemplated\u201d and the timing of their procurement. <\/p>\n
\u2022 An \u201cupdate on venue infrastructure and improvements, including, but not limited to, all related schedules and budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n
The kind of information provided by LA28 in those three areas has changed over the five years it has reported to the city.<\/p>\n
In the first years of its annual reports, LA28 reported its $1-million-and-up contractors by name and the value of their deals. Among those listed were AECOM, the global infrastructure company, which received more than $6.7 million from 2021 to 2023 for technical consulting and planning. <\/p>\n
Similarly, LA28 reported contracts with Deloitte for consulting, Gavin de Becker and Associates for security and Two Circles Inc. for \u201cticketing functional area support.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the 2028 Summer Games have grown closer, contracts signed by LA28 grew in 2024 to a total of $36.2 million and in 2025 to $687 million. But annual reports for those two years told less, no longer naming the contractors and the amount paid to each. Instead, LA28 released only broad categories of the work completed \u2014 such as \u201cengineering consulting services,\u201d \u201cmascot design and production\u201d and \u201coffice buildout.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bass and some City Council members have been pressing the Olympic organizers to direct more of their spending to companies based in L.A, arguing that the principal host city and financial guarantor of the Games deserves special consideration. Without names of the companies hired, it\u2019s harder to track where more than $687 million in business has gone.<\/p>\n
LA28 didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment from the The Times about the failure to publicly disclose the contract details. Leaders of LA28 rejected the idea that their annual reports have been incomplete, however, and repeatedly have said the organization continues to hit or exceed its projections.<\/p>\n
In their routine review of the 2025 annual report, two top advisors to the city\u2019s elected leaders described the reporting on contracts as \u201climited.\u201d Matt Szabo, the city administrative officer, said that he and Sharon Tso, the chief legislative analyst, have asked LA28 to provide a list of the $1 million-plus contractors in writing, \u201cas required by the Games Agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tso and Szabo wrote in their review last week that LA28 had not listed the detailed information, contending \u201cthat publishing specific contractors and contracting details within the annual report is financially detrimental and a risk to its future competitive contracts partnership and sponsorship activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, LA28 had shared the detailed contract information only with the top advisors and the mayor\u2019s office, Szabo said.<\/p>\n
Mejia said the identity of the contractors and how much they are being paid should be disclosed to the public. \u201cThere are concerns about who they are paying. Who is it going to? Is it a local business or is it going outside of L.A.?\u201d Mejia said. \u201cWe want to know those contract details.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the subject of insurance, LA28 provided the amounts of some coverage in reports in 2021, 2022 and 2023, while reports for 2024 and 2025 provided no coverage amounts.<\/p>\n
The 2024 report notes that rates for some insurance had increased. It described broad areas of coverage, such as cyber and media liability and event cancellation. It also said the organizing committee formed its own company, Amphoreis Agonos, \u201cto provide tailored risk management solutions and insurance coverage specific to LA28\u2019s operational needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
LA28 told The Times it had \u201cprovided copies of the required insurance policies to the City directly.\u201d And Szabo reported to the City Council last year that his office had determined that LA28 had complied with \u201cinsurance and risk management requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to preparation of venues, LA28 has estimated it will spend $1.4 billion to create 49 competition locations, spread across Southern California and Oklahoma City. The organization named AECOM as the lead consultant for construction.<\/p>\n
But in its 99-page annual report for 2025, LA28 offered just a single paragraph on venue preparation. It didn\u2019t provide any of the schedules or budgets required in the contract with the city. Mejia demanded those details for each venue, and updates on any changes from past plans.<\/p>\n
While not included in the annual report, LA28 has separately filed a venue plan with the city. In 2024, for example, the organizing group updated the plan, saying that the changes would result in a total of $150 million in combined cost savings and revenue increases.<\/p>\n
An LA28 spokesperson said \u201cvenue-related planning continues to be coordinated with City partners as appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wasserman and other organizers have said they expect the Games to at least break even, or to produce a surplus. Those profits have been promised to go, in large part, to support youth sports programs in Southern California for years to come.<\/p>\n
Unions and other activists had pressed for more commitments from the Olympic organizers at the time of the 2021 contract signing. But Wasserman disagreed. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt can\u2019t be an agreement that locks in every detail because the one thing we need is flexibility,\u201d the LA28 chairman said at the time. \u201cSeven years is a long time and the world can change a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his August letter to LA28, Mejia asked for several other disclosures: financial statements that compare revenue and spending forecasts to actual performance; bank statements on the contingency fund LA28 must maintain to cover potential losses, annual financial forecasts and a more granular breakdown of broad budget categories now labeled only \u201cother revenues\u201d and \u201cother expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Games Agreement directs LA28 to work with the mayor, city attorney, city administrative officer and chief legislative analyst on matters related to the Olympics. The agreement doesn\u2019t mention the controller\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
But Mejia said in his letter to LA28 that the City Charter gives him the power to \u201cprovide critical oversight, accountability, and financial transparency of and for the City of Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever before in this City\u2019s history has a private organization been backstopped by the city of Los Angeles to carry out an endeavor of this size and scale,\u201d Mejia wrote to LA28.<\/p>\n
Mejia wasn\u2019t prepared to lay out his next steps if LA28 doesn\u2019t comply with his demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll circle back and look at our charter-mandated authorities and powers and we\u2019ll let you all know from there,\u201d Mejia said. \u201cBut, for now, we\u2019re just going to wait to see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Organizers of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles have given vague and sometimes incomplete annual reports to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[20558,1409,1804,4017,853,187660,187659,159223,48,52,51,27729,47,50,49,78814,139886,187662,1768,72,187661],"class_list":["post-478179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-amount","tag-city","tag-company","tag-contract","tag-detail","tag-games-agreement","tag-incomplete-annual-report","tag-insurance-policy","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-la28","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-matt-szabo","tag-mejia","tag-office-buildout","tag-organization","tag-year","tag-yearly-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}