LA28 adds Honda as founding level partner, bolstering push for more funding

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LA28 announced it has landed Honda as a founding level partner, helping its push to secure $2 billion in sponsorships by the end of the year. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
LA28 announced Honda its automotive partner for the L.A. Olympics on Monday, securing a major founding-level partnership that will help the private organizing committee cover its estimated $7 billion budget.
Honda, which opened its U.S. headquarters in L.A. in 1959 and is now based in Torrance, will work with LA28 on an accessible vehicle fleet that maximizes electric vehicles for the Games to help move athletes and officials around Southern California. The partnership will support U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes in the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and the Summer Games in 2028.
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Financial terms of the top-tier partnership were not announced. Honda joins Delta and Comcast as LA28's founding partners expected to lead the way in covering the estimated $2.5 billion in corporate sponsorship needed to stage the first Summer Games held in the United States since 1996.
'As a privately funded games, our mandate is to generate the revenue we need to produce these Games,' LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman said in an interview with The Times. 'The biggest line item of that is sponsorship revenue. To be able to announce another big partner with a really spectacular brand who has been invested in Southern California for a long time is both [financially] important but also, in many ways, strategically important. It's another brand that sees the power of our Olympic platform to tell their story in a community that's very important to that industry that they've been invested in for a long time.'
Honda enters the Olympic and Paralympic arena after Toyota ended its long-running partnership with the International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee after the 2024 Games. The Olympic Partners (TOP) program lost several major Japanese sponsors after the Paris Olympics, including Panasonic and Bridgestone, sending shockwaves through the Olympic and Paralympic movements. The TOP program accounts for roughly 30% of the IOC's revenue — the largest share after broadcast rights — and a portion of the money from the top sponsors contributes to the budget of the national organizing committee's plan to deliver the Games.
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With three years before the Games, LA28 has announced several sponsorship deals in recent weeks. Aviation company Archer will provide air taxis to help alleviate traffic concerns. Saatva signed as the Games' official mattress sponsor. Snowflake, a cloud-based data storage company, will assist athletes with training data and provide information on fan engagement.
The latest deal puts LA28 on pace to hit its goal of $2 billion in sponsorships by the end of 2025, Wasserman said. IOC contributions, ticket sales and merchandise are among the revenue streams that will help balance the budget. If LA28 goes over budget, Los Angeles city government has agreed to cover the first $270 million in debt with the state of California absorbing up to $270 million.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.