Recently, I felt like Charlie Bucket searching for the golden ticket in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I “won” the lottery for the first draw opportunity to buy 2028 LA Olympic tickets.
Much of what I read about the process online were complaints, primarily about pricing. A limited allotment of $28 tickets was quickly snapped up. An Arkansas man, quoted in USA Today, opined that he’d “have to take out a loan and sell a kidney” to afford the prices to buy tickets for opening ceremonies or the most popular sports that can exceed thousands of dollars. Others complained about limited quantities of tickets available and many popular events quickly selling out.
In contrast to online kvetching, I found the ticket buying process to be fast and efficient. The key was doing homework ahead of time. I watched the well-made videos from the LA28 committee explaining how the process worked and read crowd-sourced message boards detailing what tickets were available and at what price.
I planned to purchase tickets for four events for my friends and I at a budget of $1,000 per person. In the end, I was able to buy tickets for each of our top choices including the baseball medal round at Dodger Stadium, at a total price of $980 per person.
Looking at my receipt, one common complaint did resonate with me – fees. Olympic tickets are assessed a 24% service fee, which amounted to about $187 per person. According to the LA28 committee, the service fee covers things such as the “costs of securely processing and delivering tickets.” But when LAist asked why the fee is a percentage rather than a flat rate, no answer was provided.
Angry consumers are increasingly upset over exorbitant fees for concert and sporting event tickets and policymakers are now acting.
The Federal Trade Commission and seven states last year sued Ticketmaster parent Live Nation over “deceptive pricing tactics” and selling tickets allegedly “acquired illegally by brokers.”
President Trump signed an executive order targeting “price-gouging by middlemen in the entertainment industry,” directing federal officials to ensure that “competition laws are appropriately enforced” in an industry where one giant, Live Nation, dominates the market.
At the state level, lawmakers are focused on transparency. Legislation enacted in 2023 (Senate Bill 478) now requires primary ticket sellers like Ticketmaster to list the entire price with all fees included in online ticket markets.
This year, lawmakers are focused on the resale market. Assembly Bill 1349 (Bryan) would require seat locations and original face values of tickets to be listed on secondary ticket resellers like Seat Geek, and that sellers have the actual possession of tickets or the right to sell them before listing for sale.
But other potential changes would make things more expensive. During a recent Los Angeles City Council grilling of LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover, Councilmember Katy Young Yaroslavsky cited anger over the 24% ticket surcharge in threatening a city ballot measure to impose a city $1 per ticket tax.
Her reasoning? The city potentially wasn’t getting enough of a cut from the hundreds of millions in fee revenue.
“The 24 percent surcharge is not affordable, and $1 which would have actually helped us do some of the things we know we need to do to get ourselves ready in the city (for) the Olympics feels like a drop in the bucket compared to 24 percent surcharge when we’re talking even about a $28 ticket,” she said.
Only at LA City Hall is affordability a concern until city bureaucrats want their cut.
The LA 28 games are expected to cost roughly $7.1 billion and hope to recoup $2.5 billion in revenue from ticket sales. It’s a largely privately-run event, and ticket buyers and sponsors will naturally have to pay a lot to be part of the games and balance the budget.
Outside of security and infrastructure costs, taxpayers have little desire to pay billions for 16 days of glory, nor do large public investments have a history of returning money for taxpayers (though the Paris Olympics earned a surprising surplus of about €$26.8 million.
But ticket buyers shouldn’t expect to have to pay exorbitant fees serving no clear purpose, nor should they have to pay higher taxes to local governments jealous they’re not taking in all the money they could.
Tim Anaya is the Pacific Research Institute’s vice president of marketing and communications and co-author of The California Left Coast Survivor’s Guide.