The Intuit Dome will be called just that for the Los Angeles Olympics, after organizers struck a deal with the makers of tax and business software as part of a groundbreaking arrangement to sell naming rights for venues at the upcoming Summer Games.
Intuit also announced Friday that it is the latest “founding partner” for Los Angeles, which also signed Starbucks and Honda to agreements in a recent burst of momentum.
Honda is keeping its name on the arena in Anaheim — the host of volleyball — while the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, the regular home of the LA Clippers, will stage basketball games.
Though corporate naming rights are nothing new for arenas and stadiums across the United States, this will be the first time the Olympics will allow that sort of marketing. It's considered a groundbreaking arrangement that will net the Olympics multiple millions above its projected $7.15 billion budget.
“Casey Wasserman said from Day 1 that we wanted to run a games that was fiscally responsible,” John Slusher, the head of the organizers marketing push, said of the LA28 chairman. “The idea of naming rights is obviously one that we thought could add incremental value.”
Up to 19 venues, most of them temporary, could be available for naming rights. Companies that already have their name on an LA venue will have first chance to cut a deal with the Olympic organizers and venues will not be renamed — so, for instance, the home of the Rams, which is hosting opening and closing ceremonies and swimming, is set to be called “2028 Stadium,” not "SoFi."
The arrangement with Intuit includes the company providing free tax preparation for some U.S. athletes and expanding its financial education program for the LA community.
“Our commitment to powering prosperity aligns perfectly with the spirit of the movement,” Thomas Ranese, Intuit's chief marketing officer, said in a statement announcing the deal.
Slusher, who took over as head of marketing late last year, said LA feels good about its goal of selling between $800 million and $1 billion worth of deals in 2025 to get to the $2 billion mark in corporate sponsorships by the end of the year. The overall goal has been pegged at $2.5 billion, LA got off to a slow — some thought troubling — start, but has picked up momentum after what was widely viewed as a positive Summer Olympics in Paris last year.
“We feel really good about where we're at, and we have optimism going forward,” Slusher said.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
FILE - An aerial view shows the Intuit Dome, the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Inglewood, Calif.(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, file)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged dueling threats Friday as widening protests swept across parts of the Islamic Republic, further escalating tensions between the countries after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June.
At least seven people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans.
The protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the demonstrations have yet to be countrywide and have not been as intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
Trump initially wrote on his Truth Social platform, warning Iran that if it “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.
Shortly after, Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged on the social platform X that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations. He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have repeatedly made during years of protests sweeping the country.
“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks. “The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”
Larijani’s remarks likely referenced America’s wide military footprint in the region. Iran in June attacked Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar after the U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel's 12-day war on the Islamic Republic. No one was injured, though a missile did hit a radome there.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “the Great People of Iran will forcefully reject any interference in their internal affairs. Similarly, our Powerful Armed Forces are on standby and know exactly where to aim in the event of any infringement of Iranian sovereignty.”
Araghchi also said that Trump’s message likely was influenced by those who fear diplomacy between the two nations without elaborating.
Video circulated on social media late Friday showed protests continued in many cities across the country, including at least three points in the south and east of the capital Tehran. The Associated Press cannot independently verify the footage.
No major changes have been made to U.S. troop levels in the Middle East or their preparations following Trump’s Iran post, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council's secretary for years, separately warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” he added on X.
Iran's hard-liner parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf also threatened that all American bases and forces would be “legitimate targets.”
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei also responded, citing a list of Tehran's longtime grievances against the U.S., including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, the downing of a passenger jet in 1988 and taking part in the June war.
The Iranian response came as the protests shake what has been a common refrain from officials in the theocracy — that the country broadly backed its government after the war.
Trump's online message marked a direct sign of support for the demonstrators, something that other American presidents have avoided out of concern that activists would be accused of working with the West. During Iran's 2009 Green Movement demonstrations, President Barack Obama held back from publicly backing the protests — something he said in 2022 “was a mistake.”
But such White House support still carries a risk.
“Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government’s own policies, they are likely to use President Trump’s statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors,” said Naysan Rafati, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement Trump has hinted at,” he added.
Demonstrators took to the streets Friday in Zahedan in Iran's restive Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. The burials of several demonstrators killed in the protests also took place, sparking marches.
Online video purported to show mourners chasing off security force members who attended the funeral of 21-year-old Amirhessam Khodayari. He was killed Wednesday in Kouhdasht, over 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Tehran in Iran's Lorestan province.
Video also showed Khodayari's father denying his son served in the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as authorities claimed. The semiofficial Fars news agency later reported that there were now questions about the government's claims that he served.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.
The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since the June war.
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.
Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
A woman shows a portrait of the late commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, on her smartphone during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People wave Iranian flags as one of them holds up a poster of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
This combo shows President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. and Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Bilal Hussein)
