Which 2028 Olympic Sports Should I Buy Tickets For?

I need your advice (not paywalled, so comments are open).

Tickets for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles will go on sale for Southern Californians like me who got their pre-registrations in already beginning April 2, 2026 (a ridiculous 27 months ahead of the opening ceremony on July 14, 2028) and then a week later for the rest of the world. This supposedly gives locals a shot at the legendary $28 tickets that will make up one million out of the 14 million tickets on sale.

But how much will the tickets cost? Well, that’s a secret.

Seriously.

Nobody in the public knows how much any event will cost until the moment tickets go on sale.

A week and a half before insisting that you lay your Visa card down (no other credit card accepted), they still won’t tell you how much your potential purchases will cost. You won’t know how much any event will cost until the moment tickets go on sale.

They just tell you to look at Paris 2024 ticket prices for hints. Time reported back then:

Pricing largely varies by event. The women’s artistic gymnastics all around final has tickets ranging from €125 to €690 (about $135 to $746). Swimming semi-finals and finals are similarly priced, though lowest level tickets are €85 ($92). Prices may also vary based on whether it’s a women’s or men’s event. Men’s basketball tickets for the final cost as much as €980 ($1059) compared to women’s at €510 ($551). The men’s 100-meter final for Paris is also priced at €980 ($1059) for the highest-priced tickets.

(Also, you can’t tell in which preliminary rounds the American team will play, although that’s a more reasonable uncertainty, since the qualifiers for the team slots won’t be known for some time.)

This secrecy is pretty screwy in part because deciding which of the 51 sports (49 in Greater L.A., and whitewater and women’s softball in Oklahoma City - L.A.’s Olympic philosophy is not to build many expensive new venues but, L.A. having a vast number of facilities already, just put up some Olympic-themed decorations and turn on the lights) to attend is a complicated process.

Los Angeles, as you may have heard, is a huge sprawl, with some events taking place in the middle of my San Fernando Valley (skateboarding, BMX biking, 3 on 3 basketball, and modern pentathlon) and surfing being held at the famous Trestles Beach near the defunct San Onofre nuclear power plant about 85 miles away.

So, you might decide that on, say, July 16th you would like to go to Long Beach, host of numerous events at various facilities around town but a 90 minute drive for me, to see sport X from 1 to 4 pm and then walk across the street to see sport Y from 7 to 10 pm. That sounds like a nice day even with 3 hours of commuting. But then you get online to buy the tickets when your buying time arrives only to find that a Sport Y ticket starts at, I dunno, $395 apiece.

Forget that.

All your pre-planning is thrown into chaos.

How do you plan your Olympic itinerary without being able to know how much your infinite options would cost?

OK, enough kvetching on my part.

Now I’d like your advice about which sports to see. Which of the obscure sport are most entertaining to see live?

I went to about 10 or 12 events at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and had a good time.

My general takeaway was that gold medal finals were much more exciting than preliminaries. For example, my most expensive ticket was $60 to see the U.S. basketball team with Michael Jordan beat West Germany with Detlef Schrempf in a fairly close quarterfinal. But it was a pretty ho-hum experience.

My most entertaining spectator event was some random weightlifting class to watch some ‘roided Romanian totally mog everybody else to win the gold. (Does weightlifting still have pro wrestling vibes now that they do better steroid testing?)

But I presume everybody has figured that out, so I expect finals to be priced accordingly. For example, the women’s soccer final at the Rose Bowl will likely be a hot ticket because the U.S. has a good chance of making it and then winning.

I’m between the Valley Zone and the Universal City Zone.

So, here is the list of sports:

• 3x3 Basketball - Valley Center in the Sepulveda flood control recreation area near me in the middle of the San Fernando Valley

• Archery - Carson down toward Long Beach

• Artistic Gymnastics (Regular Gymnastics, not Rhythmic) - Formerly Staples Center then GetRichQuick.com Center (or whatever it was called) downtown. Currently being called The DTLA Arena because who knows who will own its naming rights in 2028?

• Artistic Swimming (Synchronized Swimming) - Long Beach

• Athletics (Track & Field) - ye olde Coliseum next to USC south of downtown (3rd Olympics)

• Badminton — USC’s basketball court, the Galen Center

• Baseball - Dodger Stadium, minor leaguers in July

• Basketball - Clippers’ new Intuit Dome, all stars

• Beach Volleyball - Long Beach

• BMX Freestyle - Valley (near me)

• BMX Racing - Valley (near me)

• Boxing - Staples

• Canoe Slalom - Oklahoma City, OK

• Canoe Sprint - OKC

• Climbing - Long Beach

• Cricket - Pomona

• Cycling Road - Starts at Venice Beach

• Cycling Track - Carson’s Velodrome

• Diving - Next to Rose Bowl in Pasadena

• Equestrian - Santa Anita racetrack

• Fencing - L.A. Convention Center downtown

• Flag Football - The new soccer stadium next to USC

• Football (Soccer) - Rose Bowl

• Golf - Riviera

• Handball (Team) - Long Beach

• Hockey (Field) - Carson

• Judo - Convention Center

• Lacrosse - New soccer stadium near USC

• Modern Pentathlon - Valley (near me), but finals are at 9-11 am

• Mountain Bike - City of Industry

• Open Water Swimming - Long Beach

• Rhythmic Gymnastics - Galen Center (USC basketball court)

• Rowing — Long Beach

• Rowing Coastal Beach Sprints - Long Beach

• Rugby Sevens - Carson

• Sailing - Long Beach (Is kite sailing exciting?)

• Shooting - Whittier

• Skateboarding - (Park or Street?) Valley (near me)

• Softball - Oklahoma City

• Squash - Universal Studios (near me)

• Surfing - Trestles beach

• Swimming - New Sofi football stadium (37,000 seats)

• Table Tennis - L.A. Convention Center

• Taekwondo - L.A. Convention Center

• Tennis - Carson

• Trampoline Gymnastics - Staples Center

• Triathlon - Venice Beach

• Volleyball (Indoor) - Honda Center in Anaheim next to Angel Stadium

• Water Polo - Long Beach

• Weightlifting - Peacock Theater next to Staples downtown

• Wrestling - L.A. Convention Center downtown

A few thoughts:

The closer to me in the northwest part of the map, the better.

I need advice on the various flavors of the Valley sports: Skateboarding Park vs. Skateboarding Street and BMX Freestyle vs. BMX Racing. Which one of each is more entertaining?

I don’t see much reason for golf in the Olympics. It’s not like any professional golfer’s heart will be broken if he doesn’t win the gold medal the way contestants in less lucrative sports are in a much more dramatic situation.

Baseball will likely be played by minor leaguers, so it’s out.

Weirdly, I’ve never seen pro tennis live. I’m told its impressive compared to watching on TV.

I want to go to sports where even a dope like me can follow the action. For example, Olympic wrestling in 1984 was way too quick for me to follow in-person. I was constantly thinking the guy I was rooting for just scored, only to find out he’d just been scored upon.

Similarly, I can never follow indoor 6 on 6 volleyball on TV: four people leap up at the net and the ball drops straight down. I start to cheer for my team scoring but then the other team celebrates. In contrast, 2 on 2 beach volleyball is very easy to understand.

I’m not sure about fencing, but it sounds worrisomely quick.

In contrast, weightlifting was about as complicated to follow as professional wrestling, so I was entertained.

Complicated and/or annoying rules: I saw Pakistan win a gold medal in men’s field hockey in 1984. The game was comprehensible, but the ref kept stopping the action for offsides almost every time anything interesting started to happen.

Team handball sounds good in theory as a cross between soccer and basketball, but the few times I’ve watched it on TV, it looked dorky for some reason. Is there any hope for me and team handball?

A big question is: What will swimming races be like from the cheap seats 40 rows up in the Sofi football stadium? I like watching Olympic swimming finals on TV every four years, but I don’t pay any attention in between Olympics. (Tragically, I don’t see any evidence that they are bringing back the Plunge for Distance, last held at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics.)

What are sports where women are just as entertaining to watch as men?

Gymnastics would be at the high end where the women are at least as thrilling as the men (e.g., ever since Olga Korbut in 1972, the women’s uneven parallel bars, which men don’t do, has been a highlight of the Summer Games), and basketball at the low end (Caitlin Clark aside). What are some sports where women put on a good show?

What are some sports where you need expensive up-close tickets vs sports where the cheap seats are fine?

Is any particular track event shaping up to be memorable, the way in 2024 the Norwegian and British stars in the men’s 1500 m running race dissed each other for months and then the American stole the gold?

Thanks for your advice.