LA28

LA28 revealed the schedule Monday for an extended Olympic soccer tournament that will begin four days before the opening ceremony.

The soccer competition begins July 10 with four men’s group stage games across New York, Columbus, Nashville and St. Louis. The women’s tournament begins July 11 with games in all six of the preliminary round sites, including San José and San Diego.

The soccer competition, which will feature 12 women’s teams and eight men’s teams for the first time, has the longest competition window of any sport in Olympic history because the International Olympic Committee Executive Board wanted to give each team two extra rest days throughout the tournament.

Each team will have two days of rest between group stage games and three days between the final group game and the quaterfinal rounds. The men will begin their knockout round games on July 20 while the women start quarterfinal play on July 21, including one women’s quarterfinal match at the Rose Bowl.

The iconic stadium in Pasadena will host only five matches for the Olympics, including a men’s and women’s semifinal July 24 and the men’s gold medal match on July 28 and the women’s on July 29.

San Diego’s SnapDragon Stadium will have the most matches of any site with 11. In addition to three days of women’s group stage games, the home of San Diego State football, San Diego FC and San Diego Wave FC will host a women’s quarterfinal July 21, men’s and women’s semifinals July 24 and both bronze medal matches.

With the coast-to-coast soccer tournament shaping up, LA28 announced additional ticket opportunities for the competition, allowing fans interested in attending soccer matches to buy up to 12 soccer tickets in addition to the current 12-ticket maximum for all other Olympic events. The 12-ticket maximum for Olympic events includes the opening and closing ceremonies on July 14 and 30, respectively, which each have a four-ticket limit.

Ticket registration for the first ticket drop ends Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. PDT with the first tickets going on sale to locals in Southern California and Oklahoma beginning April 2. The first general ticket drop begins April 9. Fans who are randomly selected to participate in the first ticket drop will be notified via email between March 31 and April 7 with information and their assigned timeslot to purchase tickets.

More than 5 million fans have already registered for Olympic tickets, LA28 said, with Paralympic tickets going on sale in 2027. The organizing committee expects 14 million tickets to be available for the Games, which could eclipse the total ticket sales record set by Paris in 2024.

A report on how Olympic organizers will tackle civil rights, homeless and human trafficking ahead and during the 2028 Games has not been made public by the city more than two months after it was filed and no date for its release has been set, leaving human rights advocates fearing the issues will not get the attention and funding they deserve.

Council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who chairs the ad-hoc committee on the LA28 Games, has not included the human rights report on the committee’s agenda. His office did not respond to requests for comment and Sharon Tso, the city’s chief legislative analyst, and Matthew Szabo, the city’s administrative officer, both said they have not seen the report and “nothing appears on the council file,” according to Tso.

The delay is limiting discussion on an important topic, said Stephanie Richard, a clinical professor who leads the Sunita Jain Anti-Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, which released its own comprehensive report on human trafficking and the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics in December.

“From an anti-trafficking perspective, this is a historic moment” she said. “Yet the public has no access to the draft.

“Without transparency, Los Angeles cannot responsibly prepare, and advocates cannot provide informed guidance. LA28 is setting a global precedent — one that currently lacks public accountability.”

LA28, the private nonprofit organizing committee for the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles, was responsible for developing a human rights strategy around the Games. Its report was due Dec. 31, a deadline it met, according to a spokesperson for the group. LA28 is not allowed to release the report publicly until the city does.

“As per our Games Agreement with the City, LA28 completed the Human Rights Strategy at the end of 2025,” said Jacie Prieto Lopez, the group’s vice-president of communications and public affairs, in LA28’s first public statement on the report. “We are now working closely with city leaders on next steps.”

What those next steps are and when they’ll be taken, no one seems to know.

FIFA is producing its own report on human rights and human trafficking around this summer’s World Cup, which will feature eight games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

“In each host city, human rights teams are working towards tailored FIFA World Cup Human Rights Action Plans in consultation with local human rights stakeholders and in line with FIFA guidance,” a FIFA spokesperson said in a written statement. “Plans will be published ahead of the tournament. This work reflects a sustained and consistent commitment by FIFA to embed human rights considerations throughout the planning and delivery of the tournament.”

The FIFA report for Los Angeles isn’t expected to be released until May, according to sources close to the process not authorized to speak publicly, about a month before the tournament kicks off. Some of the other 11 U.S. host cities, among them Seattle and Houston, have already rolled out their own initiatives addressing the issue.

Richard, who was invited by the city to consult with LA28 on its study, said the release of both the Olympic and World Cup reports is important for Los Angeles because it allows for public comment and oversight.

Richard’s group has called on LA28 and FIFA to allocate between $2.75 and $3.1 million specifically for anti-trafficking implementation; to fund a public-awareness campaign and independent audits to ensure accountability and transparency; and to invest in long-term programs that extend beyond the two sporting events.

“One of the things our report starts from is the only evidence-based data connected to major sporting events is that labor trafficking increases,” Richard said. “Major sporting events requires an influx, a large influx, of workers, a lot of time immigrant workers who are highly vulnerable in the construction industry..

“Presumably a lot of these workers are brought in months ahead of time to do some of this work.”

Richard said the continued presence of federal immigration officers in Los Angeles adds another layer of complexity to the human trafficking mix.

In mid-February, nine state legislators signed a letter calling for LA28, FIFA and local officials to incorporate the recommendations made by Richards’ group into their own plans and to release the report publicly as “a critical step toward accountability.”

But when asked about the letter this month, the signatories contacted refused to comment. A spokesperson for assemblywoman Celeste Rodriguez, who represents the eastern San Fernando Valley, said Rodriguez was “unavailable to talk on this issue.”

Casey Wasserman’s name has been scrubbed from the agency he founded decades ago, replaced with an amorphous moniker: “The Team.”

Monday’s move comes amid the lingering controversy over the sports mogul’s decades-old association with Ghislaine Maxwell, accomplice of the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Following revelations of Wasserman’s salacious 2003 emails with Maxwell, several musicians and athletes — led by pop artist Chappell Roan and soccer star Abby Wambach — said that, to stay true to their values, they would leave the agency then known as Wasserman.

Fears of a broad flight of artists and agents prompted Wasserman to announce that he was selling his talent representation and sports marketing firm. Talks with prospective buyers have been ongoing, according to a person close to the agency but not authorized to speak publicly.

For now, the agency is still owned by Wasserman and private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.

Wasserman continues to lead LA28, the nonprofit group that will be staging the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in two years. The LA28 board’s executive committee unanimously voted to keep Wasserman as chairman, after reviewing known details surrounding his more than 20-year-old flirtations with Maxwell and his “strong leadership” of the Games.

Visitors to the Wasserman agency website were greeted with a message saying the firm, as of Monday, was rebranding as the Team.

“For 24 years, this company has been shaped by our work, our people and our unifying belief in the power of Sports, Music and Entertainment,” the message read. “That philosophy remains the foundation of who we are — and where we are going.”

Wasserman was not mentioned in the website messaging. Nor was he pictured in its photos depicting smiling agents. Old press releases have been changed to refer to the company as the Team, not Wasserman.

The website’s background is now adorned with a grid of T’s.

In a Feb. 13 memo to his staff, Wasserman acknowledged his appearance in a recent batch of documents released by the Department of Justice related to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell had “become a distraction.”

Wasserman said he was “heartbroken that my brief contact with them 23 years ago” had brought hardship to the agency he created in 2002.

“I’m deeply sorry that my past personal mistakes have caused you so much discomfort,” Wasserman wrote to his staff. “It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to the clients and partners we represent so vigorously and care so deeply about.”

Wasserman appears to have met Maxwell on a September 2002 humanitarian trip through Africa, sponsored by former President Clinton.

Wasserman, a prolific Clinton fundraiser whose famous grandfather helped the Democrat win the 1992 presidential election, was joined on Epstein’s jet by his then-wife, Laura, actor Kevin Spacey, Epstein and his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell and others, including security agents.

It’s not clear when Wasserman and Maxwell began corresponding via email. The messages contained in the Justice Department files are from March and April of 2003. In them, Wasserman writes about wanting to see Maxwell in a tight leather outfit and she offered to give him a massage that can “drive a man wild.”

Maxwell was convicted of sexual abuse in 2021.

Wasserman has worked nearly a decade to bring the Olympics to Los Angeles.

Former Mayor Eric Garcetti recruited him to help L.A. win its host bid and the International Olympic Committee reportedly were impressed with Wasserman’s “network of contacts.”

Behind the scenes, there have been tensions with Los Angeles political leaders. Mayor Karen Bass has said that Wasserman should step down from the high-profile role overseeing the Games. Bass said that “we need to look at the leadership” of LA28 and that her job is to make sure that the city is “completely prepared” for the Games.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in an interview Monday that she does not want embattled mogul Casey Wasserman running the 2028 Summer Games.

Bass told CNN’s Dana Bass that it was “unfortunate” that the organizers of the Los Angeles Olympics are supporting Wasserman amid revelations that he exchanged flirty emails with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell two decades ago.

Bass initially declined to take a position on the drama surrounding Wasserman, saying two weeks ago that it was up to the board of the LA28 Olympics — the nonprofit behind the Games — to decide whether to keep him.

But Monday, Bass offered a new take on Wasserman’s fate.

“My opinion is that he should step down,” Bass said. “That’s not the opinion of the board.”

She said that “we need to look at the leadership” of LA28 and that her job is to make sure that the city is “completely prepared” for the Games.

Wasserman has previously apologized for his correspondence with Maxwell and expressed regret for having any association with both her and Jeffrey Epstein. The exchanges took place before Maxwell’s crimes became known and before she was sentenced to prison for luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by financier Epstein.

Wasserman announced last week that he would sell his sports and entertainment company because of backlash over the email exchanges.

The executive committee of the LA28 board announced Wednesday that it reviewed the mogul’s past conduct and determined that based on the facts and his “strong leadership” of the Games, he should continue to serve as chair of LA28.

The LA28 executive committee — a subset of its broader, 35-member board — said it took “allegations of misconduct seriously.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, carrying the Olympic flag, LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman, front right, and Team USA Olympians skateboarder Tate Carew, second from left, diver Delaney Schnell, rear right, and volleyball player Micah Ma’a, top right, arrive in Los Angeles on Aug. 12, 2024.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

It met Wednesday after hiring outside counsel O’Melveny & Myers LLP to assist reviewing Wasserman’s interactions with Epstein and Maxwell. Wasserman, it said, fully cooperated with the review.

L.A.’s Olympic leaders have yet to reveal who is on the committee. Bass’ office last week said her appointees on the executive committee include entertainment attorney Matt Johnson, real estate developer Jaime Lee and union leader Yvonne Wheeler.

At least 10 L.A.-area politicians, including a third of the 15-member Los Angeles City Council, have called on Wasserman to resign from leading the Olympics, with many arguing the exchanges are a distraction.

City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is challenging Bass in the upcoming mayor’s race is among those calling for Wasserman to step away. Raman previously worked at a women’s rights organization formed in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement before becoming a council member.

Even before revelations about the emails, there were tensions between Wasserman and some Los Angeles politicians concerned that financial shortfalls in staging the $7-billion Summer Games will need to be covered by local taxpayers.

The relationship between the city and LA28 was further strained when the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published allegations in 2024 that Wasserman was a “serial cheater” who’d carried on affairs with young female staff members. Wasserman, who separated from his wife, Laura, in 2021, has denied the allegations.

Former Mayor Eric Garcetti picked Wasserman, a close friend, more than a decade ago to run the Olympics.