Los Angeles Hands Olympic Swimming to SoFi Stadium

The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-0 on March 28, 2025, to send 2028 Olympic swimming to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. Organizers put the wider venue rewrite at $156 million in added revenue and avoided build costs, while the city still covers the first $270 million if the Games lose money.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson told colleagues the work had to be finished “in a way like 1984.” The two sports that pay the most in tickets now land in Inglewood, a separate city, inside stadiums that did not exist when Los Angeles won the bid.

Los Angeles Voted Its Swim Meet out of Town

The 2017 bid map kept pool swimming on the USC campus, in a temporary stadium at Dedeaux Field. LA28, the private nonprofit running the Games, asked in 2024 to move that meet into the Rams’ and Chargers’ house, and the council’s consent was required because Inglewood sits outside city limits.

On March 26, 2025, the Ad Hoc Committee on the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games voted 5-0 to send the package forward. Two days later the full council adopted it, 14-0, with Councilmember Heather Hutt absent, as recorded in the official venue amendment file.

LA28 Chairperson and President Casey Wasserman had already sold the rewrite as the cheapest way to keep a balanced budget, using stadiums that already stand rather than building new ones, even when those stadiums sit outside Los Angeles.

Choosing from spectacular existing venues, wherever they are, rather than building new permanent or temporary stadiums, achieves more than $150 million in savings and new revenue to help maintain a balanced budget.

Casey Wasserman, LA28 chairperson and president, June 21, 2024 venue plan announcement

The same council action also locked in flag football’s Olympic debut and the return of lacrosse as a medal sport for the first time in more than a century. Both are assigned to Exposition Park Stadium, next to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, so those two additions stay inside the host city even as swimming leaves it.

HOW THE VENUE PLAN MOVED

1. 2017: The city approves a bid map that puts swimming at USC’s Dedeaux Field, basketball at Staples Center, and gymnastics at The Forum.
2. June 21, 2024: LA28 publishes the first major rewrite and asks the city to let swimming and basketball leave town.
3. March 26, 2025: The Ad Hoc Committee approves the material relocations, 5-0.
4. March 28, 2025: The City Council adopts the amendment, 14-0.
5. April 15, 2025: LA28 releases a fuller map after IOC Executive Board approval the week of April 9.

Councilmember Tim McOsker, who represents the Harbor Area, still used the floor to complain that sailing was headed to Long Beach instead of San Pedro. The vote itself did not break. The city signed off on the Inglewood pool, then waited for Lausanne to do the same.

SoFi Stadium Will Host the Largest Swim Crowd

LA28 says the converted bowl will be the largest swimming venue in Olympic history, with 38,000 seats. That is more than double the 17,500-seat temporary stadium once drawn for Dedeaux Field, and it copies the 2024 U.S. Olympic trials, which put a pool inside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

World Athletics and World Aquatics both signed off on flipping the usual Olympic order so track can occupy the Coliseum in week one and swimming can take SoFi in week two. The stadium is also in the split Opening Ceremony plan, which is why the pool cannot go in on night one.

THE SOFI SWIM MEET

• Seat count: Organizers list 38,000 seats for the races, without using the stadium’s corporate name on official maps.
• The water: Two Olympic-size pools go on the field, one for racing and one for warm-ups, after the football surface comes out.
• The calendar: The Games run July 14 to 30, 2028, with swimming in the second week so the ceremony and the meet can share the bowl.
• The landlord: SoFi is privately owned by Rams owner Stan Kroenke as part of the Hollywood Park site, which is also slated to house the Games’ international broadcast center.

The conversion only works if the stadium is handed back in time for the next NFL season. That deadline, more than any speech about legacy pools, is why the Olympic water is a rental. Southern California still has to fill those tanks, treat them, and dump them on a football calendar, which is a harder operations problem than a meet at a campus pool that could have stayed up through August.

Basketball Follows the Clippers to Inglewood

The 2017 bid put Olympic basketball in downtown’s Staples Center, now Crypto.com Arena, home of the Lakers, Kings, and Sparks. The approved plan sends the sport to the Intuit Dome, the Clippers’ new Inglewood arena, and slides artistic gymnastics and trampoline into the downtown building the basketball teams used to occupy.

Gymnastics had been down the road at The Forum, the 1984 basketball house that is now mainly a music hall. In the shuffle, downtown loses the basketball tournament and gains the gymnastics crowd, which LA28’s city report said offers more seats and more hospitality rooms for a marquee sport. Inglewood, already home to SoFi, picks up the other indoor giant.

THE THREE SPORTS THE COUNCIL HAD TO MOVE

LA28’s own June 2024 notice put an estimated $156 million in combined savings and new revenue on the whole rewrite, with each shift supposed to improve the budget by at least $10 million. A city that once advertised a downtown sports park now rents the two loudest sports to a neighbor that spent the last decade putting up privately financed palaces.

What the 1984 Games Locked Away From Taxpayers

Harris-Dawson’s 1984 line was about money, not architecture. The 1984 organizing committee was a private operation, and a city charter fight in the late 1970s kept Los Angeles off the hook if the books went red. Those Games finished with more than $230 million in surplus, which still funds youth sports here.

The 2028 host contract runs the other way. If LA28 comes up short, the city covers the first $270 million. The state is next in line for another $270 million. After that, leftover losses fall back on Los Angeles. Harris-Dawson said the city could not afford a miss on that scale, which is why he wanted the venue plan to look tight.

We absolutely cannot afford that under any circumstance. So we have to make sure this is done and done right, and done in a way like 1984.

Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Los Angeles City Council president, March 2025 hearing

Using buildings that already exist is the part of 1984 that survived. The legal wall around the treasury did not. Mayor Karen Bass, in LA28’s April 15, 2025 venue release, said Los Angeles will become only the third city to host the Summer Games three times and argued the new map would help the city turn a profit, as 1932 and 1984 did. Profit is the hope. The contract is a backstop.

Why Paralympic Swimming Goes to Long Beach

Olympic swimmers get Kroenke’s bowl. Paralympic swimmers do not. LA28 assigned Para swimming, and Olympic artistic swimming, to Long Beach, because the Inglewood stadium has to revert to football before the Paralympics open on August 15, 2028, and run through August 27.

That split is the hidden cost of copying Indianapolis. A campus tank at Dedeaux Field could have served both Games. A football stadium cannot, unless the NFL season moves, which it will not. Long Beach already holds a cluster of water sports on the official map, including open-water swimming, so the Para meet is not homeless. It is simply not in the building that will be sold to the world as the swim stadium.

USC, for its part, is redeveloping the Dedeaux Field corner of campus, which LA28 cited as one reason the original tank was dropped. The university keeps other work, including badminton and rhythmic gymnastics at the USC Sports Center, but it loses the night the city used to promise on its own baseball field.

The $270 Million Backstop Survived the Venue Swap

Every argument for SoFi, the Intuit Dome, and Crypto.com Arena was about ticket capacity, hospitality suites, and not pouring public money into temporary stands. None of those shifts changed the host-city guarantee. The sports moved. The first-loss check did not.

LA28 also used the same rewrite to send canoe slalom and softball to Oklahoma City, saying Southern California has no local whitewater course and that the largest softball yard in the region seats fewer than 2,000 people. The International Olympic Committee now encourages hosts to use existing venues even when they sit far outside the host city, and the council’s March vote accepted that reading.

WHERE LOSSES FALL IF THE GAMES GO RED

• City first layer: Los Angeles covers the first $270 million of a shortfall under the host contract.
• State second layer: California is next for another $270 million, a separate tranche, not a second count of the city’s check.
• After both layers: Remaining losses return to Los Angeles, which is why Harris-Dawson treated the venue math as a risk file, not a branding exercise.

The current Olympic map, published against a March 17, 2026 cutoff, still lists swimming at the Inglewood “2028 Stadium” and basketball at the Intuit Dome, among more than 40 venues and 51 disciplines, with no new permanent builds, a first for a Summer Games since London 1948. The Coliseum remains the only stadium to host Olympic track three times. SoFi remains a football house that will be asked, for nine days, to pretend it is a pool.

Inglewood gets the global shots of the races and the basketball tournament. Los Angeles keeps the Coliseum, the downtown gymnastics arena, and the first $270 million of any hole in the books. That is the deal the council locked in, and it is the part of 1984 that did not come back.

The Games open on July 14, 2028, with SoFi in the ceremony plan and a pool due in the same bowl a week later. Until the water is in and the tickets are scanned, the city’s hedge is still the one it had before the vote: hope the private committee’s budget holds, because the marquee venues now belong to someone else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where Will Olympic Swimming Be Held in Los Angeles?

It will not be held inside the City of Los Angeles. Races are assigned to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, with swimming placed in the second week of the Games so the same bowl can take part of the Opening Ceremony first; the 22,209-person crowd at the 2024 U.S. trials in Lucas Oil Stadium is the attendance mark this configuration is built to beat.

Why Did Olympic Basketball Move to the Intuit Dome?

The 2017 bid had basketball at Staples Center. LA28 moved it to the Clippers’ new Inglewood arena so the downtown building could take artistic gymnastics and trampoline, which had been booked at The Forum, a 1984 basketball site that now runs mainly as a concert hall.

Did the IOC Approve SoFi Stadium for 2028 Swimming?

Yes. The IOC Executive Board signed off the week of April 9, 2025, after LA28 Chief Executive Officer Reynold Hoover presented venue, program, and ticketing items at the 144th IOC session in Costa Navarino, Greece, on March 20, 2025, and the city had already given written consent for the out-of-town shifts.

Why Is Paralympic Swimming Not at SoFi Stadium?

The football stadium has to be returned for the NFL season before the Paralympics begin on August 15, 2028, so Para swimming and Olympic artistic swimming are assigned to Long Beach, with open-water races at Belmont Shore rather than in the Inglewood bowl.

What Did the 2017 Bid Put at Dedeaux Field?

The candidature listed a temporary installation at USC’s baseball yard for swimming, diving, and synchronized swimming. Diving later moved off that plot, and the university’s redevelopment of the Dedeaux Field area was cited when pool swimming was pulled from campus entirely.