Why are Olympics tickets so expensive?

The Olympics ticket pre-sale for locals wraps up Wednesday, but some in Southern California left the first ticket drop empty-handed after seeing the high prices.

Fans — or potential ones — reported sticker shock, big purchases and broken hearts after logging on to secure a spot at the 2028 Games and finding prices as high as $5,500, and a 24% service fee. Tickets for $28 for many events sold out fast, as did many many for under $100.

Sarah Maizes of Miracle Mile got a slot to buy tickets and wanted to get seats at artistic gymnastics for her daughter, who's a huge fan. But after she saw the limited options and the high prices, she didn't end up buying any.

"I understand tickets to events are expensive. I have paid for Taylor Swift tickets," Maizes said. "Here's the problem. The campaign made you feel like you had a shot at an insider deal because we are hosting the Olympics and this is our town…and I'm looking at tickets online for $400 a person, $600 a person, $2,100."

The high prices reflect a stark uptick in sports tickets across the board in recent years, amid hyper-focus on wealthier fans, an ever-increasing demand for live entertainment, and dynamic pricing — where sellers can adjust prices based on that demand.

In the case of the Olympics, the local organizing committee LA28 is counting on ticket and hospitality sales to bring in a whopping $2.5 billion to cover the costs of putting on the Games. If they don't hit that mark, public funds could be on the line.

Still, Olympics super-fan Denny Nivens in Hermosa Beach, who said he's attended eight summer Games, said the prices were the highest he'd ever seen, by a long shot.

"It's completely unprecedented," Nivens said. "I think they're pricing a whole lot of people out completely."

How many $28 tickets are left?

LA28 has not laid out how many tickets it released in its drop for locals, or put out official prices. Instead, it laid out that 1 million tickets would be $28, more than half would be over $200, and 5% would be more than $1,000.

But Angelenos who participated in the ticket drop told LAist they felt drawn in by the promise of $28 tickets, only to see astronomical prices on their screens.

Many reported that the cheapest tickets were almost entirely unavailable. By Monday, one buyer reported only seeing $28 tickets left for women's golf prelims and women's soccer matches outside of Los Angeles.

LA28 spokesperson Gigi Gutierrez told LAist via email that hundreds of thousands of $28 tickets had been sold — and tens of thousands remained available as of Monday.

"That's hundreds of thousands of Angelenos that were able to get incredibly affordable tickets," Gutierrez said.

She said that the future availability of $28 tickets would depend on how many were sold in Drop One, indicating that cheap tickets could only become harder to come by.

Why are tickets getting more expensive?

Olympics prices aren't the only ones on the rise. FIFA has also come under fire for the cost of attending this year's World Cup, which have been listed for thousands of dollars. It's a trend that fans are seeing not just in mega-events but in average sports seasons, too.

One reason that tickets are rising, sports economist Victor Matheson told LAist, is simple: there are more people than ever who want access to sporting and music events and can afford to pay for them. But capacity remains basically the same.

"The Coliseum in Rome at 2,000 years old is about the same size as the Coliseum in L.A.," Matheson said. " You have more and more people, and more and more money, fighting for basically the same number of seats and the same amount of entertainment."

But he also pointed to the ever-smarter technology sports teams and events organizers have at their fingertips that allow them to jack up prices. These techniques and the many fees associated with ticket purchases have come under increasing scrutiny, as consumer experiences increasingly cater to the very wealthy and fans wonder who profits when ticket prices jump.

Ticket revenue is a major part of LA28's budget

The success of ticket sales in Los Angeles will be critical to the success of the Olympic Games. Organizers currently have a $7.1 billion budget to put on the Olympics — and much of the expected revenue will come from ticket sales.

LA28 hasn't said specifically how many Olympics tickets are for sale, only that together with the Paralympics, there are 14 million tickets in total.

But Rich Perelman, who worked for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, recently estimated that if 12 million of those tickets are for the Olympic Games in particular, the average ticket price would need to be $208.33 to hit the $2.5 billion in expected revenue.

"That’s why they are so expensive," Perelman wrote on his website The Sports Examiner.

Matheson, the sports economist, said high ticket sales could help LA28 stay out of the red.

" [It's] actually pretty good for taxpayers," Matheson said of Olympics tickets being high. "In that the more money that's raised from ticket prices, the less likely any taxpayers will be on the hook for cost overruns at the Olympics."