Los Angeles agreed to host the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics nine years ago on the promise that the Games would cost the city nothing. It still has no citywide estimate of what hosting will cost.
The LAPD is the only city department The Basin found with a published Games estimate: $1.15 billion for personnel. How much of that the city will have to cover remains unresolved. A federal security grant and reimbursement from LA28 could pay some of the costs, but neither has been settled in enough detail to put a number on the city's share.
In a May memo from the LAPD's Major Events Group, venue deployment accounts for $732.2 million. That includes $378.2 million for LAPD officers and $354 million for officers from other agencies. The department expects to supply about a third of the officers needed at peak demand, leaving a shortfall of 4,458 a day. The memo says the Secret Service, which leads Games security, has advised that those are not positions federal agents will fill, and that the Governor's office has not committed National Guard personnel.
Another $290.4 million would keep regular police service running across the city while officers work the Games. Support operations account for $128.7 million. Overtime and outside labor priced at overtime-equivalent rates make up $457.5 million of the total, about 40 percent.
The City Administrative Officer sent the memo to the committee without endorsing it. His transmittal says his office has not independently verified the analysis, and questions how much of the total is normal and customary service the city already funds in the department's annual budget. The department, for its part, treats the figure as a floor: staffing and costs are “expected to increase, not decrease, as the planning process matures.”
The projection excludes equipment, vehicles, technology, infrastructure, training and planning above the department's current baseline. Some of those purchases are already moving through City Hall.
In November 2025, LAPD requested $95.8 million for vehicles, a radio network upgrade, more than 1,600 body cameras and an armored SUV. The proposed 2026–27 budget carried $42.4 million in borrowing for 407 vehicles, but the Council deleted the authority for the 300 patrol cars before adopting it, leaving $13.042 million for the 107 vehicles that aren't. On September 9 it instructed the City Administrative Officer to reauthorize that amount.
What the $1.15 billion is made of, and what it leaves out
LAPD's personnel estimate and its separate $95.8 million equipment request. All three bands use the same scale.
la-olympic-cost-ledger. The four components are from the LAPD Major Events Group memo of May 2026, read in full as CAO Budget Memo No. 168. The $95.8 million is the department's November 2025 capital request. Both totals are ours.Other departments haven't published estimates for operating during the Games
Firefighters and paramedics will also have to cover the Games. For its own planning, LAPD describes a footprint of eight competition venues and roughly 550 miles of race courses and road-event routes. We found no published estimate for fire and emergency medical services across that area.
Other departments have budgeted for Olympic preparations. We found no estimates for their operating costs during the Games. The Bureau of Engineering and Street Services have $8.35 million for sidewalk maintenance on venue approaches. Transportation has $5 million for striping, signs and signal repair near the venues, Westwood and the road races. Civil, Human Rights and Equity has $125,539 for Games volunteer coordination, Disability $67,429 for ADA compliance, and Building and Safety $30,900 for the construction the Games are expected to bring. Those are appropriations for work done in advance.
One department has priced its Games work
What City of Los Angeles departments have published about the 2028 Games, as of September 2026. The two groups are different kinds of figure and are drawn on different scales.
la-olympic-cost-ledger. The police figure covers personnel only and runs against that department's appropriation in the 2026-27 Proposed Budget, Exhibit A. The Games money below it is from the Final Budget Recap of 21 May 2026 and CAO Budget Memo No. 93, and pays for work done in advance rather than for serving the Games.The Games Agreement also requires the city to maintain normal service levels throughout the event at its own expense. There is no dollar limit attached to that obligation.
Much of the reimbursement detail won't be settled until 2027. Venue Services Agreements specifying what LA28 is being asked to pay for are due July 1. The associated cost estimates aren't due until October 31.
That leaves the city ordering vehicles, which take time to manufacture, before it knows how much money it can recover.
The agreement the Council approved in August doesn't name individual operating departments. The City Administrative Officer told the committee in December that the broad wording was deliberate: a more specific list could leave the city unable to claim costs it hadn't yet anticipated.
Federal funding and LA28 reimbursement
Congress set aside $1 billion for Games security in the 2025 reconciliation act, through FEMA's State Homeland Security Grant Program. That money is available to state and local agencies working the Games across the country. Los Angeles has no guaranteed share of the full billion.
Potential funding for the Games
The city's published Games bill against the money identified to cover it. The federal grant is drawn open because none of it has been allocated to anyone.
As of September 2026, no Games-specific notice of funding opportunity had been issued, leaving eligible uses undetermined. LAPD said in July that it did not expect reimbursement for vehicles; their eligibility was still unconfirmed.
The CAO expects federal grant money to cover the cost of officers from outside agencies. He also cites pending state legislation, AB 2411, that could transfer those contracts to CalOES. The LAPD, in the same document, writes that only the overtime portion of the venue deployment is anticipated to be reimbursable.
LA28's $7.145 billion operating budget has no line item for law enforcement. The organizing committee has agreed to reimburse the city for certain services above normal levels through the Enhanced City Resources Master Agreement. But that agreement sends public safety costs in areas designated for the National Special Security Event through a separate planning and coordination process.
Venue deployment is the largest item in LAPD's estimate, at $732.2 million. The reimbursement agreement does not establish how that security bill will be paid.
Where the Games will be
The map shows locations listed in the city's agreement with LA28. Race routes and security perimeters are omitted because the source documents do not map them.
An August amendment would also give the city access to LA28's $270 million Allocated Contingency. LA28 gets first claim on the fund to cover its own shortfall. The city comes second, followed by the legacy entity.
The amendment still needs written IOC approval. The parties have yet to agree on how money would be distributed.
Adding up LAPD's estimates
The City Administrative Officer and Chief Legislative Analyst gave no citywide cost estimate in their June report on the agreement. Their fiscal assessment was that “the future fiscal impact of hosting the 2028 Games cannot be determined at this time.”
Other people involved in the planning have put the security bill at roughly $1 billion. A lawyer representing city employees working on Games security told the Los Angeles Times that her clients estimated at least $1 billion in extra costs for LAPD and the Sheriff's Department combined. In a March report to the Council, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto referred to the city's estimated $1 billion in security funding and asked what would happen if extraordinary expenses exceeded that amount.
Those figures aren't audited, and they cover different things. The employees' estimate includes the Sheriff's Department; LAPD's projection covers its own personnel needs and assistance from outside agencies.
Adding LAPD's published personnel estimate and its separate equipment request produces a total of $1.25 billion. Remove the $290.4 million for regular citywide policing, on the grounds that much of it is salary the city would pay anyway, and the sum falls to $956.7 million.
For scale, the $1.15 billion personnel projection is equivalent to 54.5 percent of LAPD's $2.11 billion appropriation in the proposed 2026–27 budget. Against the department's $3.56 billion total operating cost, including pensions and benefits carried elsewhere in the city budget, it is about 32 percent.
The Oxford Olympics Study 2016 found usable cost-overrun data for 19 of the 30 Summer and Winter Games held between 1960 and 2016. All 19 went over budget. The Summer Games averaged a 176 percent overrun after inflation.
The study covers sports-related costs, so its overruns do not predict what Los Angeles will spend on city services. Nor does it give an overrun figure for Los Angeles in 1984, because the researchers lacked a usable bid baseline for those Games.
Every Summer Games with a usable bid baseline went over budget
Sports-related cost overrun against the bid budget, Summer Olympic Games 1960 to 2016, in local currencies and real terms. The series is the organizing committee's costs, not the host city's.
Los Angeles has already started approving borrowing for police vehicles. It still cannot say how much of the Games bill will come out of its own budget.
Methods
The $1.15 billion personnel projection and its components come from the LAPD's Major Events Group report of May 4, 2026, transmitted to the Budget and Finance Committee by the City Administrative Officer on May 7 as Budget Memo No. 168. The Basin found the report in the CAO's online budget memos. We added the memo's line items and confirmed the total. Everything else is read directly: Board of Police Commissioners report 26-214 and the Budget and Finance Committee's August 18 report, both in Council File 26-0600-S111; City Attorney report R26-0161 in 15-0989-S63; and the City Administrative Officer and Chief Legislative Analyst's joint report of June 25, 2026 in 15-0989-S68, whose Exhibit A supplies the venue list. The Basin assigned the map coordinates. The source documents do not provide mapped race routes or security perimeters.
The $95.8 million is LAPD's November 2025 request. LAist reported it covered about 500 vehicles, so we treat the 407 vehicles in the proposed budget as inside that request rather than additional to it. The Council kept 107 of those 407 when it adopted the budget. That is an inference from the counts, not a published reconciliation.
The two document plates are unaltered crops of those filings, rendered from the PDFs the city posts. Nothing in them is retyped or redrawn. Orange underlines highlight the passages cited in the article.
Overrun figures are Table 3 of The Oxford Olympics Study 2016, in local currencies adjusted for inflation; Los Angeles 1984 has no usable bid baseline and so no overrun figure. A department with no figure here has not published one; that is not a claim that its Games work is free. The $1.25 billion and $956.7 million totals are The Basin's calculations, not accounts of money spent, and the city has not published a citywide Games total.