The 2028 Olympics Could Add $20 Billion. Four Host Areas May Miss Out.

A separate county analysis flags Carson, Pomona, the City of Industry and Exposition Park as likely pass-through zones.

The 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games would add at least $20.5 billion in economic output across Greater Los Angeles. That's the projection in a report prepared for the organizing committee LA28 by the Institute for Applied Economics at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, first reported by LAist. Organizers presented it at a news conference on Tuesday, September 15, 2026.

The total counts public money alongside visitor money.

Publicly funded transportation and security work is one of the report's inputs. The largest block of spending it tallies is capital projects, in a Games marketed as a no-build Olympics:

• the $2.6 billion Los Angeles Convention Center renovation
• improvements at Los Angeles International Airport
• Metro ExpressLanes on the 105 Freeway
• upgrades to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena

The forecast covers Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. It puts the new activity there at $20.5 billion to $25.4 billion. The job gain is roughly 126,000 to 152,000.

A second, less conservative method in the same report runs output higher, at $35.4 billion to $40.6 billion. Stephen Cheung, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, told the news conference the two sets of figures “provide a responsible range, not an exaggerated promise.”

About $5.7 billion of LA28's own spending would land in the five-county region, the report estimates. The committee's budget is $7.1 billion.

It's the second Olympic forecast to surface this month. An analysis by HR&A Advisors went to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in early September 2026. It estimated more than $13 billion in direct spending in Los Angeles County alone, and $19.2 billion in total output there, LAist reported.

That one also mapped where the money may not reach. HR&A named Carson, Pomona, the City of Industry and Exposition Park, all of them hosting Olympic events, as possible pass-through areas. Such places, the report said, “may struggle to capture spending from visitors who pass through but do not spend money outside the venue.”

The county analysis raised the same question about parts of the region with no Games activity at all, including the Antelope Valley and Southeast Los Angeles. Its list of places sure to be busy in the summer of 2028 is shorter and more familiar: downtown Los Angeles, Old Town Pasadena, downtown Long Beach and the Venice Boardwalk.

One number in all of this is a pledge rather than a projection. LA28 has committed to keeping 75% of its $7.1 billion budget inside Greater Los Angeles. A quarter of its spending is promised to small businesses.

Source: laist.com, retrieved September 16, 2026.