LA Olympics to sell naming rights to some venues in game-changing deal for 2028

Organizers of the Los Angeles Olympics will sell naming rights for a handful of its venues in deals expected to bring multiple millions of dollars to the 2028 Games while breaking down the International Olympic Committee's long-sacrosanct policy of keeping brand names off its arenas and stadiums.

The organizing committee announced the landmark deal Thursday, saying contracts were already in place with two of its founding partners — Honda, which already has naming rights for the arena in Anaheim that will host volleyball, and Comcast, which will have its name on the temporary venue hosting squash.

LA28 chairman and CEO Casey Wasserman said revenue from the deals goes above what's in LA's current $6.9 billion budget.

He portrayed the deal as the sort of paradigm-shifting arrangement that Los Angeles needs more than other host cities because, as is typical for American-hosted Olympics, the core cost of these games aren't backed by government funding.

“We're a private enterprise responsible for delivering these games,” Wasserman said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It's my job to push. That doesn't mean we're going to win every time we push, but it's our job to always push because our context is pretty unique.”

Wasserman said he also spent time explaining to IOC members how arena and stadium names are part of the lexicon in American sports.

“People know ‘Crypto’ as 'Crypto,' they don't know it as ‘the gymnastics arena downtown,’" Wasserman said of the home of the Lakers, Crypto.com Arena, which will host gymnastics and boxing in 2028.

Rights for up to 19 temporary venues could be available. The IOC's biggest sponsors — called TOP sponsors — will have first chance to get in on the deals. Wasserman said no venues will be renamed — so, for instance, if organizers don't reach a deal with SoFi (opening and closing ceremonies, swimming) or Intuit (basketball), no other sponsor can put its name on the arena.

Not included in this new arrangement are the LA Coliseum, Rose Bowl and Dodger Stadium, some of the most iconic venues in a city that hosted the Olympics in 1932 and 1984. Organizers said IOC rules that forbid advertising on the field of play will still apply.

The deal adds to a growing list of accommodations pushed through for Los Angeles, which is once again poised to reshape the Olympic brand, much the way it did in 1984.

In 2017, the city was bidding for the 2024 Olympics against Paris, but agreed to instead host the 2028 Games. It was part of a then-unheard-of bid process that rescued the IOC from the reality that cities were becoming reluctant to absorb the cost and effort to bid for and host the Summer Games.

Olympic watchers viewed the return of softball and baseball for 2028, along with the introduction of flag football (with help from the NFL) as changes that maybe only Los Angeles could've pulled off.

LA will also make a major scheduling change for the Olympics, moving track and field to the opening week of the games and swimming to the end.

Wasserman said the organizing committee's position as a private entity plays a major role in its relationship with the IOC.

“We spend the time, we do the work, we make the argument, and we don't settle for a ‘No,' because we don't have that luxury," he said.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

FILE - LA28 logos decorate a backdrop as First lady Jill Biden speaks at a reception at the U.S. Chief of Mission Residence to commemorate the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics and celebrate the upcoming 2028 Olympic Games, to be held in Los Angeles, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

FILE - Casey Wasserman, LA28 chairperson and president, takes questions from the media during a news conference in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

FILE - This aerial view show Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump issued a flurry of pardons in recent days, including for the father of a large donor to his super PAC, a former governor of Puerto Rico and a woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term but who ended up back in prison for a different scheme.

Trump commuted the sentence of Adriana Camberos just before his first stint in the White House ended in 2021. That followed her being convicted as part of an effort to divert 5-Hour Energy drink bottles acquired for resale in Mexico and instead keep them in the U.S. Prosecutors said she and several co-conspirators attached counterfeit labels and filled the bottles with a phony liquid before selling them.

In 2024, she and her brother, Andres, were convicted in a separate case, this one involving lying to manufacturers to sell wholesale groceries and additional items at big discounts after pledging that they were meant for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation facilities. The siblings sold the products at higher prices to U.S. distributors, prosecutors said.

The Camberoses were among 13 pardons Trump issued Thursday, along with eight commutations. An additional pardon was announced Friday for Terren Peizer, a resident of Puerto Rico and California who headed the Miami-based health care company Ontrak.

Peizer had been convicted and sentenced to 42 months in prison, and fined $5.25 million, for engaging in an insider trading scheme to avoid losses exceeding $12.5 million, according to the Justice Department.

The president has issued a number of clemencies during the first year of his second term, many targeted at criminal cases once touted by federal prosecutors. They’ve come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails — including the firing of the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

Also pardoned this week was former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez, who had pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker. Her sentencing had been set for later this month.

Federal prosecutors had been seeking one year behind bars, something Vázquez’s attorneys opposed as they accused prosecutors of violating a guilty plea deal reached last year that saw previous charges including bribery and fraud dropped.

They had noted that Vázquez had agreed to plead guilty to accepting a promise of a campaign contribution that was never received.

Also involved in the case was banker Julio Herrera Velutini, whose daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC in 2024, and gave the group an additional $1 million last summer. The case's third defendant was former FBI agent Mark Rossini, who was also pardoned by the president.

The recent wave of clemencies joins previous Trump pardons of Democratic former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Republican ex-Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose promising political career was upended by a corruption scandal and two federal prison stints.

Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of cheating banks and evading taxes, also got Trump pardons.

The president also pardoned Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar in a bribery and conspiracy case. He later expressed regret and frustration for having done so, however, when Cuellar announced he was seeking reelection without switching parties to become a Republican.

President Donald Trump points after arriving at Palm Beach International Airport on Air Force One, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)