The cricket matches at the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics will likely be played on the East Coast, host committee chair Casey Wasserman said Friday.
Speaking at the Texas Business of Sports Summit in Austin, Texas, Wasserman said LA28 is tailoring the cricket program to maximize viewership in India. Delhi is 12 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Los Angeles; it is nine hours and 30 minutes ahead of New York.
The Indian market was a critical part of cricket’s pitch to join LA28. As Sportico detailed in May, the IOC currently collects very little media money from India, the world’s most populous country. The four-year deal that included the 2024 Paris Games was worth a reported $12 million. Adding cricket, the International Cricket Council told the IOC, could raise that to something in the $201-$268 million range for the four-year LA28 cycle. There was also talk of LA28 sharing in that upside; Wasserman declined to comment on whether that happened in a Sportico interview last October.
In Austin on Friday, Wasserman wasn’t specific about which East Coast venues might be targeted, or other specifics about LA28’s plan. An official venue plan released in June 2024 didn’t include cricket, and a representative for LA28 didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Los Angeles host committee has a $6.88 billion budget, with a domestic partnership goal of $2.5 billion that is still coming together. That said, Wasserman said Friday that the group had already secured $4.7 billion in contractually obligated revenue, which has come before tickets go on sale, though he wasn’t specific about how that was calculated. For reference, he said, the 2024 Paris Games brought in about $4.2 billion in total revenue.
Cricket was one of six sports—joining baseball, softball, flag football, squash and lacrosse—that were recently added to the Olympic program specifically for LA28. It has been in the Games once before, in 1900.
Unlike the other new sports, cricket presents a unique venue challenge. LA28 has been vocal about how it plans to keep costs down by utilizing existing venues, but there are very few—if any—suitable cricket venues in California. Or in the rest of the country. When the ICC’s T20 World Cup was co-hosted in the U.S. earlier this year, the three venues were in Dallas, Fort Lauderdale and a temporary stadium that was built on Long Island outside New York City.
The pitch and irrigation from that venue are still in place, though the structure was torn down. The New York franchise in Major League Cricket, owned by the family of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, one of the richest men in the world, is reportedly also planning to build a venue in the New York City area.
Cricket wouldn’t be the only LA28 sport not being played in California. The group has already announced that canoe slalom and softball will take place in Oklahoma City. Venues already exist there, and utilizing pre-existing infrastructure outside LA will help the group achieve “more than $150 million in savings and new revenue to help maintain a balanced budget,” Wasserman said in June. Other sports may follow.
In general, recent Olympics have spread beyond the single specific host city. The 2024 Paris Summer Game held its surfing in Tahiti, sailing in Marseille and soccer all across the country. (Soccer in the 1984 Los Angeles Games also took place across the country).
