In July of 2028, the world will meet in Los Angeles for the Summer Olympic Games. LA28 Olympic Ticket sales began this month—and there’s already quite a bit of confusion and frustration.
In this video, we’re sharing our experience, a few tips, and what to expect—whether you were or weren’t chosen in the lottery or didn’t use all of your allotted tickets.
Keep reading, or watch our video explaining the LA28 Olympic Ticket Purchase experience from our perspective.
The LA28 Olympic Ticket Lottery
Registration for the LA28 ticket lottery began in mid-January and ran through mid-March. My husband and I both registered… and hoped for the best.
So, this isn’t about who’s fastest—it’s about who gets lucky.
On April 2nd, I received an email—one I almost missed entirely—letting me know I was selected for a ticket purchase timeslot on April 4th as part of the locals presale. This was for people residing in certain counties local to LA and Oklahoma City.
If you’re not selected, you’ll receive an email like this instead.
The email included links to everything—competition schedules, venue info, zone maps, and even the LA28 YouTube channel to help guide you through the process.
I didn’t watch their videos—but you might want to. Or stick with this one. Or both. Honestly, the more info you have, the better.
On April 3rd, I got another email with the link I’d need to enter the system the next morning—and some key rules:
- You can purchase up to 12 tickets total (excluding football/soccer, which has its own 12-ticket allotment)
- You choose seat categories, not exact seats, they’ll be assigned closer to the games.
- Once tickets are in your cart, you have 30 minutes to check out. Don’t underestimate this…30 minutes can pass very quickly.
This is where the planning began
I didn’t expect this to be easy—but I also didn’t expect the level of anxiety I felt leading up to it.
I thought I was over-prepared… until I started seeing other people online doing the exact same thing, days of research, spreadsheets, color coding. These were my people.
I uploaded the full event schedule from the LA28 website into Canva and cropped it down to just the events we were interested in—just to make it easier to read.
Then I took it a step further.
Using the GoodNotes app on my iPad, I created a full calendar of the Games so I wouldn’t accidentally book overlapping events.
And then… I took it even further.
I color-coded everything and mapped out events week by week to compare options—especially knowing preliminary rounds would be cheaper than finals.
All of this is available through LA28… I just needed it in a way that made sense to me.
I also made a list of our ideal ticket combinations—including my sister and her family—with backup plans ready to go.
Spoiler: those plans didn’t last very long.
Our goal was to prioritize preliminary events so we could attend more overall, instead of spending everything in our budget on one big event. But that’s totally personal—if you want finals or premium seats, that’s completely up to you.
Keep In Mind
Be aware of the distance between zones. Los Angeles is a huge area—and not all Olympic zones are even in the city itself.
I couldn’t figure out how to embed directly from LA28 so click here to find this PDF file on their site!
If you’re not familiar with the area, it’s really helpful to keep the zones map handy and check distances ahead of time—especially if you’re considering events on the same day.
My Experience Buying LA 2028 OLYMPIC TicketS
The morning of, I logged in about 30 minutes early, had my schedule ready on my iPad, and my phone ready to call my sister.
I had heard from others that the queue took them up to 30 minutes…
My time slot was 10am, I was in by 10:02
Once you’re in… it’s a lot.
You can filter by event, venue, zone, date, and price range—but you can’t sort by price, which makes things a little harder.
I made a mistake right away.
I focused on swimming first—and instead of just grabbing tickets, I paused to call my sister about pricing and timing, and what specific swimming races were taking place. That hesitation cost us. We weren’t able to get swimming tickets at all.
Looking back, I should’ve gone in knowing exact price limits and just grabbed the first available option.
Instead, we pivoted to 3×3 basketball—where we’ll get to see four games in one session. Five tickets at $37.21 each.
By the end of my session, we had 14 tickets across multiple events for under $600.
And after all the back-and-forth decisions… I checked out with 15 seconds left.
I did not want to find out what happens when time runs out.
The next day, before my window closed, we logged back in and added 2 golf tickets.
Then Matt got an email for his own timeslot—which gave us another shot.
When his date and time arrived, inventory was more limited, but we added handball and basketball.
Altogether: 20 tickets, 7 events for 5 people.
All for under $1,000
Good to Know
If something says unavailable—it is, for now.
If a sport doesn’t show up—there are no tickets.
Whether that means sold out or not released yet, OR it’s a ticketless event, we don’t actually know, yet. We do suspect Road Cycling and Marathon racing will be ticketless events along with surfing and open water swimming.
By Danielle – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26865620
And honestly? Aside from baseball, I don’t know much about these sports.
But I plan to!
That’s part of the fun—we’ll be learning as we go and showing up to support these amazing athletes.
Tips for LA28 Olympic Ticket Purchasing
Tip #1: Check your “Promotions” or “Offers” folder.
My email completely skipped my inbox—I would have never seen it if I hadn’t accidentally opened my laptop mail app, which combines those folders.
Honestly… total accident. But a very lucky one.
Tip #2: Log in the night before and make sure everything works.
You won’t be able to enter early—but you can avoid password issues or login problems ahead of time.
Tip #3 Don’t Panic
So if you didn’t get selected—or didn’t use all your tickets—don’t panic.
From what we’re seeing, you’ll automatically be included in the second ticket drop later this year.
We don’t have an exact date yet… but as soon as we do, I’ll keep you posted.
There will also be an official resale marketplace opening in 2027—so you can safely buy and sell tickets.
la28 olympic ticket purchasing: Final Thoughts
If you have questions, drop them in the comments—I’ll answer what I can or include the answer in future posts. More information is always available at LA28.org as well.
We’re planning a full LA28 series leading up to the Games—from tickets to venues, transportation information, and our visit to the games when the time comes.
So if you want to be prepared… make sure you’re following along. In the meantime, enjoy some of our Stadium Tours!