\n<\/p>\n
By now, email notifications have already started to go out for\u00a0LA28\u2019s first ticket drop, which runs from\u00a0April 9 to 19 (registration for the ticket draw has already closed).\u00a0If you followed the chatter around the presale, you probably already know a bit of what to expect: eye-popping prices and low-to-no availability for some of the Games\u2019 premier events, but also the opportunity to partake in L.A.\u2019s third Summer Games\u2014including some chances to see Olympic-caliber competition for only $28. Our two L.A. staff members didn\u2019t have any sort of special treatment when it came to tickets; we\u00a0were placed in the same pool as every other would-be ticket\u00a0holder and faced both disappointments and unexpected ticketing pickups. If we were able to do it all over again\u2014because make no mistake, there\u00a0will<\/em> be more ticket drops<\/a>\u2014here\u2019s what we wish we knew ahead of time.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s one piece of advice I can stress, it\u2019s this.\u00a0When your time slot opens, beeline it to the events you\u2019re most interested in and start adding tickets to your cart. On the fence about whether the seats\u00a0left are too expensive? Just add them for now; you can always remove them later. Once you add your first set of tickets to your cart, you\u2019ll then have a half hour to check out\u2014meaning those seats are also now set aside for the next half hour.<\/p>\n So the next step? Add some more tickets to your cart (there\u2019s a 12-ticket limit per account, as well as an additional 12-ticket allotment for soccer matches). Those first few minutes of a time slot are absolutely crucial for procuring seats at sought-after events.\u00a0Then<\/em> when you feel satisfied with your selections, you can decide whether you\u2019ve gone over budget and either remove some selections or go straight to the checkout process. Note that you can complete multiple transactions within your 48-hour window, so you don\u2019t have to buy all of your tickets at once.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re trying to attend high-demand events, you\u2019ll waste precious time scrolling through the hundreds of sessions to find what you need. And sports like swimming and track, which pack multiple heats and finals into\u00a0two sessions each day? Forget about\u00a0finding your preferred event on the fly. Instead, do some research beforehand: LA28 has a table of every single event<\/a>, each with a corresponding five-digit session code. You\u2019ll want to type that code into the search bar of the ticketing page to go directly to the event you\u2019re after.<\/p>\n Navigating that official PDF can be pretty unwieldy, though, so I highly suggest turning to fan-made options instead. (To be fair, LA28\u2019s ticketing page does have plenty of options to filter by sport, price and availability\u2014as well as a helpful walkthrough on YouTube<\/a>\u2014but I found those options most useful as I was perusing events after<\/em> the initial rush for tickets.) Personally, I made a copy of this shareable Google Sheet<\/a>\u00a0and used that to narrow down which events I was most interested in. Alternatively, I\u2019ve seen this very user-friendly schedule explorer<\/a> passed around (though I also saw a similar one taken down a few days ago). These two sources also list the prices, so you can get over the sticker shock in advance. Speaking of\u2026<\/p>\n Disappointed Angelenos fell into three buckets during the locals presale: those who weren\u2019t selected at all, those who were gobsmacked by the premium prices and those who couldn\u2019t\u00a0find\u00a0any<\/em> open spots for high-demand events. Let\u2019s start with the prices, because unlike most seated sports events, you\u2019re not actually selecting individual seats but instead choosing from a handful of pricing categories (exact seats will be assigned closer to the Games). And there\u2019s quite a spread between those categories; while the men\u2019s gold medal basketball game tickets start at just over $100, the next category jumps up to nearly $650 and only gets worse from there, climbing\u00a0into the thousands. Want to sit field-level at the opening ceremony? That\u2019ll be over $5,000. Finals always cost more than preliminary rounds; take swimming, where\u00a0a morning prelim may start around $50 but the get-in price for a final that evening roughly doubles.<\/p>\n LA28 has said that a million $28 tickets will be available across the Games, and about half of all tickets will be under $200. But there are 843 sessions on the schedule\u2014meaning these bargains are\u00a0sometimes\u00a0very<\/em> limited, and likely the first sections to sell out. Take\u00a0the closing ceremony, where the sole $28 tickets are for a tiny section at the top of the Coliseum that\u2019s partially obstructed by the press box, otherwise the next tier of tickets starts at $217. Or some of the track finals, where the sub-$500 tickets were quickly claimed, and a $700-plus ticket might still have you situated toward the very top of the stadium. That said, other events are certainly more generous: For the preliminary rounds of beach volleyball, $28 seats abound in the upper tiers behind the end lines.<\/p>\n This is all assuming you can find any<\/em> open tickets for some events. The locals presale started on April 2, and I was lucky enough to draw a time in the afternoon on April 3. But\u00a0when it was my turn,\u00a0I was unable to find any tickets at any price point for the opening ceremony, and there were none left for the women\u2019s gymnastics final as well. And I thought I would be the only weirdo prioritizing track cycling, but the comparatively intimate velodrome was already booked up for the events I was eyeing. There didn\u2019t seem to be any added inventory as the weeklong presale progressed; my mom and wife each had time slots on the following days, but inventory continued to dwindle across all sports, and the opening ceremony remained sold out. That might be the case for this first ticket drop, too: LA28 says that\u00a0due to high demand during the locals presale, \u201ccertain sports do not have any more inventory in Drop 1\u201d but that more tickets will be added in additional drops that start \u201clater this year.\u201d<\/p>\n Circling back to my \u201ccart first, questions later\u201d pointer, plenty of other people will add tickets to their cart but opt not to actually purchase them. That means some tickets will flicker back into stock, particularly about a half hour into your time slot as people\u2019s carts expire. The ticketing site has a bookmark system built in, and I found it was solely useful for this process: Bookmark a\u00a0handful of events that you couldn\u2019t find tickets to, and then keep refreshing your bookmarks tab about a half hour into your time slot; if tickets become available for any one of them,\u00a0you\u2019ll see a badge that says \u201cstarting at\u2026\u201d\u00a0in this view. On the other hand, don\u2019t expect to find more ticket inventory later\u00a0on in your two-day window.<\/p>\n This is just a bit of quick digital hygiene. You\u2019ll receive your ticketing link about a day before your time slot opens, and this is the perfect opportunity to make sure that you can actually log in. I\u2019d also suggest saving your credentials to your browser; this way you\u2019re not fumbling with passwords as you race against the clock to secure tickets.<\/p>\n Our things to do editor Gillian Glover was hoping to score tickets to gymnastics or rep the Valley during skateboarding at the\u00a0Sepulveda Basin or squash at Universal Studios<\/a>. But given high prices and limited availability, she instead opted for much more affordable tickets to a badminton prelim.<\/p>\n There are a bunch of other sports that have\u00a0tons<\/em> of preliminary rounds\u2014baseball, handball, cricket, field hockey, rugby and volleyball, among them\u2014that may have more affordable tickets than some of the typical primetime contenders. That said,\u00a0maybe think twice before scooping up\u00a0too many<\/em> cheap tickets: Your 12-ticket maximum carries across\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>ticket drops, so you may miss out on other opportunities for in-demand events as they add more inventory later in the year. (Again, soccer has its own separate 12-ticket maximum.)<\/p>\n Simone Biles pulling off her gravity-defying\u00a0maneuvers on the vault?\u00a0Stephen Nedoroscik crushing it on pommel horse? Those are both\u00a0part of\u00a0artistic gymnastics, which is what most Olympics-watchers think of when we say \u201cgymnastics.\u201d But there\u2019s also rhythmic gymnastics,\u00a0a more dance-like variant of the sport that involves routines with hoops and balls. When you\u2019re trying to buy tickets, be very mindful of which gymnastics you\u2019re vying for. As someone who very much would have liked to have seen ribbon-tossing gymnasts ferociously compete against each other, I\u2019m convinced that rhythmic gymnastics sold out so quickly because confused ticket buyers thought they were nabbing seats to artistic gymnastics.<\/p>\n Whether you\u2019re an out-of-towner or a local, you almost surely associate Los Angeles with traffic. We don\u2019t know exactly what the roads will be like during the city\u2019s\u00a0promised car-free Olympics<\/a>, but even without traffic (and with taking advantage of public transit), L.A. is a\u00a0big<\/em> place. There are roughly\u00a040 miles between beach volleyball in Long Beach and skateboarding in the Valley, and it could take you about as many minutes with zero traffic\u2014or two hours in the thick of rush hour. So if you\u2019re buying tickets to multiple sessions in a day, make sure you pay attention to the location.\u00a0Venues within an individual zone are mostly within walking distance of each other (notably inside the\u00a0DTLA, Exposition Park, Inglewood, Carson, Long Beach and Valley zones), but the\u00a0distinct zones are\u00a0often a substantial bus, train or car ride away from each other\u00a0(aside from the DTLA and Exposition Park zones, which are only a couple of Metro<\/a> stops away).<\/p>\n Also, some events aren\u2019t even in L.A. at all. And I\u2019m not talking about the sports that are being staged toward the edges of the county, like mountain biking and cricket, or volleyball and surfing, which are an entire county away. Instead, I\u2019m referencing softball and canoe slalom, which are both being held in Oklahoma City, as well as the preliminary soccer matches being staged around the country<\/a>, including in San Diego, San Jose, Nashville, St. Louis, Columbus and New York. (Later round matches will be held in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl.)<\/p>\n The Olympics are still more than two years away; there will be other ticket drops, and there will\u2014for better or worse\u2014be plenty of resellers. If you\u2019ve largely struck out with tickets now, there\u2019s always a small chance resale prices could crater just ahead of an event. Of course,\u00a0we normally think of\u00a0resale markets as being considerably\u00a0more<\/em> expensive. But inevitably, some desperate secondhand ticket sellers opt to lower prices in the days or hours ahead of an event\u2014and with more than 800 ticketed sessions, that\u2019s\u00a0a lot<\/em> of tickets to unload.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After almost a week of frantically checking lottery result emails, sitting in (brief) virtual queues and doing double takes on ticket prices,\u00a0the locals presale for the 2028 Olympics\u00a0has come and gone. Now it\u2019s time for everyone else\u00a0chosen in the ticket draw to try their luck (including some Angelenos who were\u00a0passed over for the presale), and\u00a0our … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/9-Olympics-ticket-drop-tips-from-locals-who-braved-the.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26785,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26783\/revisions\/26785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Add to cart first, ask questions later.<\/h2>\n
2.\u00a0Know the five-digit codes for the events you want to see.<\/h2>\n
3. Prepare for high prices\u2014or no inventory at all.<\/h2>\n
4. Keep checking for high-demand tickets for\u00a0around\u00a0a half hour after your start time.<\/h2>\n
5. Log in ahead of your time slot to make sure your account works.<\/h2>\n
6. Be flexible and attend an unlikely sport if you can get\u00a0cheap tickets\u2014but keep your 12-ticket maximum in mind.<\/h2>\n
7. Artistic gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics are\u00a0not<\/em> the same.<\/h2>\n
8.\u00a0Pay attention to the event locations and plan accordingly.<\/h2>\n
9. Consider playing\u00a0the waiting game and keeping your fingers crossed for last-minute resale tickets.<\/h2>\n
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