World Cup Gives Los Angeles An Olympics Test Run

LOS ANGELES — 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.”

Concerns remain here, including about the cost of attendance. Blumenfield might benefit from attending a World Cup match at SoFi Stadium given that he is on the council’s ad hoc committee involved in preparations for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But that’s not in the cards: “It’s too rich for my blood — I can’t afford a ticket,” he said.

Indeed, tickets to local World Cup matches have been climbing: the get-in price for Sunday’s Iran-Belgium contest is nearly $900 on one resale platform.

Transit remains a major issue, too — and one that several elected officials said they are monitoring closely.

Rep. Laura Friedman, who called the World Cup “a great dress rehearsal” for the 2028 Games, said it is paramount that Olympic organizers build on public transit gains from the soccer tournament. According to Los Angeles Metro data, ridership on Metro buses serving SoFi Stadium increased 41 percent from the first World Cup match at the venue to the second. While Friedman praised Metro for “performing very well,” she said that “for the Olympics we can try to increase” use of public transit.

“At SoFi Stadium, we have seen very expensive parking fees, we've seen a lot of congestion, long travel times,” said Friedman, a Burbank Democrat. “Especially for foreign visitors who may not be renting a car, they expect to be able to take public transportation — easily and safely.”

For all the comparisons of the two events, the Olympic Games are a vast enterprise many times larger than the World Cup — a fact not lost on local elected officials who caution against an apples-to-apples comparison. “The success of the World Cup at SoFi underscores our ability as a city to be able to manage these types of large-scale events,” said LA City Council member Monica Rodriguez, who also is on the ad hoc 2028 Games committee. “The difference with the Olympics is that we're going to have multiple venues that are going to be hosting all at the same time. … So my primary concern is about the cost of security.”

On that front, LA has avoided major public security problems during the World Cup. The closest thing to a controversy at LA’s matches has been the uneven enforcement of FIFA’s ban on the display of Iran’s pre-revolution flag inside the stadium during the team’s draw with New Zealand on Monday.

LA City Council member Adrin Nazarian, a former state lawmaker who was born in Iran, attended that game and said “it felt very safe.” He also took public transportation to get there, and gave the trip high marks. “I wanted to experience that myself, just to kind of see how it is,” he said.

“What was happening in the Metro lines, for example, I was blown away,” he said. “Extremely helpful staff, ambassadors all over the place, high-visibility security. So, for folks coming in who may have had a negative impression about Los Angeles and the homelessness or safety concerns, you wouldn't have experienced it.”

Public transportation helped Nazarian avoid Krekorian’s fate. As for the major events czar, did he ever get to make that left turn onto Manchester?

“I made a six-point turn … and I got out of there and took a different route,” Krekorian said with a laugh.