City leaders are studying every traffic jam, transit challenge, and fan experience as Los Angeles prepares to welcome the world again in 2028.
Paul Krekorian, head of Los Angeles’ Office of Major Events, was driving to SoFi Stadium for the U.S. soccer team’s opening match against Paraguay when he found himself stuck in a traffic jam, trapped behind a mess of unmoving cars on a side street in Inglewood.
The problem: A self-driving Waymo vehicle was at the head of the line, attempting — without success — to make an unprotected left turn onto Manchester Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare.
“It couldn’t figure out that it was never, ever going to be able to make that left turn,” said Krekorian, a former LA City Council member appointed to the newly created major events role by Mayor Karen Bass.
He was annoyed. But what Krekorian actually saw was an opportunity — to correct a problem ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics, which will use the $5 billion-plus stadium for swimming events and the opening ceremony. It is the way many local officials are watching the World Cup unfold here: monitoring everything from the performance of traffic signals to signs of political unrest as a stress test for the Olympics.
“Instead of just steaming about it, I was thinking: OK, how are we going to geofence Waymos?” Krekorian said.
“How are we going to work with the transportation network companies to make sure that we have effective pick-up and drop-off locations? All of that stuff.”
The messy lead-up to the World Cup — marked by weak hotel bookings, high ticket prices and security concerns — left some in LA leadership circles worried about the fate of the tournament, and its implications for the Olympics here. The World Cup’s economic benefit to the region remains a big question mark, and its early run in LA has revealed pressure points. In interviews with POLITICO, state and federal officials said they were concerned about reports of traffic jams in Inglewood. They also lamented the high cost of parking and tickets to the matches, the latter a longstanding complaint among soccer fans who’ve been priced out of attending the tournament, and a source of frustration among California elected officials who have demanded answers from FIFA.
“We saw three to five hours of congestion just for people to go to SoFi to pay $200 for parking,” said LA City Council member Bob Blumenfield. “Seeing some of those things, obviously, LA28 is a much larger footprint, so… we really are going to have to focus on the transit element of all this. And obviously, with the Olympics, we are thinking about that.”
But the nation’s second-largest city has avoided the major disruptions some had feared. And after nearly a week of World Cup matches — including two high-profile games at SoFi Stadium, one of them involving Iran’s team — Los Angeles politicians are more confident than ever that the city can pull off the upcoming global sports gathering that has been in the works for almost a decade.
“Much of what we’ve done in preparation for welcoming the world for the World Cup will be applicable to what we will do in ’28 for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Krekorian said. “There’s a palpable excitement here to be hosting the World Cup, and this is only a fraction of what we’ll see when it comes time for ‘28.”
The stakes are unusually high in Los Angeles — perhaps more so than in any of the other 10 World Cup host cities in the U.S. — because a major misstep would inevitably raise questions about the region’s ability to put on the Olympics. The city has already been the target of criticism from conservative personalities and politicians who questioned Democratic leaders here after the January 2025 firestorms, including the late Charlie Kirk and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), both of whom suggested the Games should be moved elsewhere. If the World Cup is a success — eight games will be played here over several weeks — it would demonstrate that a liberal, blue-state city can still pull off a complex mega-event.
Reynold Hoover, CEO of LA28, the Games‘ organizing committee, told POLITICO he and his team are paying close attention to the soccer tournament — and that once it concludes, they will analyze data ranging from public transportation ridership and fan zone attendance to spectator flows in and around SoFi Stadium.
“This is an opportunity not just for LA, but for the country to show that we can actually do something really big together,” he said. “And when you look at the World Cup and what you’re seeing here in the United States, I think that’s a precursor, and I think both sides of the aisle see the value of having the Summer Olympics here in the United States for the first time since 1996.”
