Los Angeles residents are pretty pumped about the 2028 Summer Games.
Nearly 60% of Angelenos believe the multibillion-dollar event will be good for their California city, and almost as many say they’re also excited about hosting another Olympics, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Suffolk University poll.
Still, the level of enthusiasm for the Olympics in L.A. falls considerably short of how much support Utahns have shown for bringing another Winter Games to Salt Lake City, either in 2030 or 2034.
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll of Utahns last month found 82% of the Beehive State’s residents want another Olympics after hosting the 2002 Winter Games — up from 79% when the same question was asked six months earlier.
Of course, the questions asked by the Boston-based Suffolk University for the Los Angeles Times were different. In fact, the question about whether the 2028 Olympics would be good for L.A. spelled out some potential concerns.
The question noted the 2028 Summer Games have an estimated price tag of nearly $7 billion in private funds, and are expected to “bring thousands of people to the city for a month of events.”
Even so, slightly more than 20% said the Olympics would be bad for Los Angeles, while about 16% said hosting wouldn’t matter to their city, 5% are undecided and 1% refused to answer. The rest, just over 57%, see the Games as good for where they live.
A similar number said they’re excited about hosting, including 27% who labeled themselves “very excited,” compared to about a quarter who said they’re “not at all excited,” and just over 15% who are not very excited.
Matthew Burbank, a University of Utah political science professor who’s written books about the Olympics, didn’t expect to see that much support for the Summer Games in Los Angeles.
“I’m actually surprised that at this point, it’s that high,” Burbank said, adding “the very fact that you have that many people in the city of Los Angeles saying that they’re excited or that they think it’s going to be a good thing, I think it’s not too bad.”
Los Angeles hosted two previous Summer Games, in 1932 and 1980, and had been trying for a third for years when the International Olympic Committee decided six years ago to award both the 2024 and 2028 Summer Games at the same time.
The 2024 Summer Games went to Paris, and Los Angeles ended up with several extra years to prepare for 2028. Burbank said L.A. organizers have done little yet to promote the upcoming Olympics to the public.
“In all honesty, the Games have been almost under the radar there because they were picked early and because the organizing committee has really gone out of its way not to attract a lot of attention,” he said.
Unlike Los Angeles, Salt Lake City is still waiting to hear if another Olympics is coming. After postponing a pick last December, the IOC is likely to name the hosts of both the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games some time next year.
Six places have expressed interest in hosting a Winter Games — Sapporo, Japan; Vancouver, Canada; a yet to be determined city in Sweden; and two contenders the IOC has declined to name, possibly including a so-called “European super bid.”
Burbank said support for hosting an Olympics tends to be higher during the bid process, when “it’s all happy talk, all the time.” But the professor said Utahns seem to be “much more positive” about the Games.
“There’s a general sense of goodwill towards the Olympics. People thought the last Games were successful,” he said. “There’s this residual sense among lots of Utahns, ‘Oh, yeah, that was a good thing and that we benefited from it.’ That’s a big part of what’s driving opinion.”
Given that underlying sentiment, Burbank said even if Salt Lake City gets another Games, he doesn’t expect public opinion to change dramatically.
That may already be happening in Los Angeles, though. The Los Angeles Times reported its new poll shows “support for hosting the massive sports event remains widespread, although it may have begun to dip.”
Previous polls conducted since L.A. was awarded the Games found 76% to 83% approval for hosting, according to the newspaper, but noted those surveyed county and even regional residents, too.
The latest poll, which also covered a wide range of other topics, was conducted March 9-12 of 500 people living in the city of Los Angeles and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
The Sports Examiner, a California-based Olympic newsletter, pointed out there was more support in the poll for hosting the Summer Games than for L.A. “as a place to live.” Less than half of the Angelenos surveyed rated their hometown as excellent or even good.