The Best Bang for Your Buck at the LA Olympics

Which events are worth going to? A data-driven exploration of value you might call The Best Tickets at The Cheapest Prices for the Summer 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles

Olympic athletes train their entire lives to make it to the Games. LA28 has created a way for fans to have the same experience: buying a ticket.

This is not an add-to-cart situation. It’s a decathlon.

Two years in advance of the big event, fans navigate waiting rooms and queues to give away personal information to register for a chance to be randomly selected for a 48-hour timeslot to compete with others to buy tickets of varying prices in a section of a venue where your seat may or may not be next to the person you came with to watch a sport you may or may not be familiar with played by athletes who may or may be representing the country you wish to support.

For anyone unfamiliar with training for Olympic ticket buying, this August there’s a second round of sales. Some 10 million tickets of the promised 14 million are still available.

Ever since I heard on the radio that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was on a flight to LAX carrying the Olympic flag back from Paris 2024, I haven’t stopped thinking about attending. I had no idea how complicated it would be. But I made it through the qualies, analyzed every sport’s prices on April 15, 2026, plus tons of other data, and made sense of the entire picture to help fans figure out which sports (and prices) are worth the effort if you get the chance.

Here’s what I found.

The Spread: Ticket Prices from Courtside to Nosebleeds

You probably know LA28 officials said one million tickets would be $28. 

The cleverish price stands out when you start seeking that price point. And when you see the cuckoo other face-value prices, like $43.41 and $291.47 and $458.06. Didn’t we stop making pennies last fall?

Officials did not reply to a request for comment about the non-roundness of the numbers. 

Andrew Thomas, an international ticketing systems expert, said it could be because services charges and fees must be included in headline prices because of new legislation. 

But the FTC’s junk fees rules went into effect last May, more than 10 months before sales began. Just saying. 

Either way, most every session of every sport has a range of ticket prices.

Here are ticket prices for 28 of them, organized by me by indoor, outdoor, and water events for a single session. I chose preliminaries (not finals) for consistency but some, like track and field, have medals ceremonies throughout.

Categories Schmategories

A thing about the tickets for sale is you don’t know where your seats will be. LA28 tickets are sold by “category”. And your seats may not be next to each other, according to LA28 FAQs:

We cannot guarantee consecutive seating when purchasing multiple tickets to a session in the same ticket category, but we will do our best to assign seats made in the same transaction together.

Yet more than 4 million tickets—without assigned seats—were already purchased, according to officials.

“Highly engaged fans are more willing to pay, and go through much more of a hassle, to see their favorite teams and athletes,” says Jan Boehmer, PhD, who teaches at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sport Marketing Research. 

He says it’s especially true for rare events, such as the Olympics, where the event itself might be a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. 

As @smartassjen23 put it on reddit: “I had such a stress headache! 😆 But in the end I’m just so grateful I’ll get to attend.”

To better understand the categories here are official Swimming and Artistic Gymnastics seating-area maps with prices for one session added by me:

Wait. How Many Olympic Sports Are There?

Depends on who you ask. Some say 36. The 2028 Olympic Games list shows 51 sports “by event”.

After considering sessions and venues, I separated a few. Like Sailing: Windsurfing and Kite and Sailing: Dinghy, Skiff and Multihull, happening in different locations: Belmont Shore and the ocean off the Port of Los Angeles. That feels like two, not one.

By my count there are 56 sports. That’s the number you need to buy tickets.

Play Clock: The Long and Short of LA28 Sessions

Duration varies wildly across sports: 18 holes (golf); four 8-minute quarters (lacrosse); 21 points, best of three (Badminton); possible extra innings and stoppage time (baseball, softball, soccer); divers have one minute to get in the water but a dive itself takes less than three seconds. Etc.

LA28 tickets are sold by session, a set start and finish time for the various rounds, games and/or matches. If attendance time means everything to you, choose tickets based on session length.

Grab comfortable shoes and sunscreen or marine layer hoodies (there are, in fact, clouds in SoCal, especially by the Ocean): longest sessions land you outside watching road cycling, golf, and surfing.

This ranking would be more useful if prices were consistent. But time at LA28 is unequal money.

There are free sports: road cycling, half marathon, marathon, triathlon. If you simply want to be part of an Olympic event, find a spot along a road course. If you want to be at a finish line, there are hospitality packages (read: not remotely free).

Ticket Price Per Hour of Average LA28 Olympics Session, in the Cheapest Seats

To determine which sports were the best deal per hour, I used the lowest ticket prices as of April 15, 2026, whether seats were available or not, and divided by the average session length, which I created by averaging all listed sessions. I aslo ranked the flipside.

I did not include freebies.

These rankings are great if you’re going to the Olympics because It’s The Olympics and you’re factoring in the energy of the crowd. But what if you’re going for the action?

I thought about how much time surfers and spectators wait between waves and scoring and the near nonstop action of many team sports. I realized the time-in-seats metric was not enough.

How much actually happens once you take your seat? For the athletes action is nonstop because so much of sports is mental. Think baseball or softball players are just standing around? The brains are going. Individual sports are arguably worse, with no one to share pressure and blame. Recovery time is also a factor.

But not if you’re in the stands.

The Olympics, Priced Out

I estimated the amount of action—continuous competition time—in each sport’s average session duration, from the spectator perspective. Then divided cheapest ticket price by estimated action time.

If you like nature to be part of the competition, you’re going to love sailing, surfing, and golf (bonus for access to a country club you’re likely never otherwise entering).

Here’s every sport, ranked by these metrics.

Price per active hour, however, is lacking as a measurement. Live sports are fun because there’s always something to look at, even if it’s not worthy of official scoring, like preparation rituals. Not to mention crowd energy. And anticipation: unknown outcomes and diving board accidents, am I right?

I cannot allow weightlifting to be at the bottom because I heard spectators, including those who not-by-first-choice attended this event at past Olympics, love it because it’s easy to understand and the athletes are nice to each other, respecting physical and technical demands.

And I cannot allow sailing to be at the top because what are you actually seeing? If you want to chill at the beach, go to surfing and bring patience.

On Reddit and other social media you’ll hear complaints and also hype. Get in on it! As @ entirelybusybeing said: “I made a list of all my second and third tier sports I was open to seeing. And once I started thinking of all the other sports, I realized how happy I’d be with most of them. It’s the OLYMPICS. It’s gonna be a great time regardless.”

People say archery and shooting are mesmerizing (I have reasons to rank archery over shooting but it’s mostly a decision about noise). Table tennis has passionate fans. Judo has spectacular, dramatic endings. Trampoline is an adrenaline rush. And so forth. 

Vibe is value. It’s why people go to watch parties. It absolutely must be factored in.

Best Bang for Your Buck at LA28

With data and reporting and love of sports and underdogs and consideration for venue and admitted subjectivity, here are the best values at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics (buy tickets to these if you don’t know what else to do):

Indoor

Outdoor

Water

Make your lists, revise them twice, and get ready for the chance of a lifetime to maybe go to an event in 700 or so days.

Olympics officials say: “Drop 2” ticket sales will have “refreshed inventory across all Olympic sports at a range of price points.”