By Karolos Grohmann
MILAN, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The issues of entry visas and inflated ticket prices for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics dominated a progress report delivered by the American organisers to the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday.
Several IOC members, including International Equestrian Federation chief Ingmar De Vos, raised the issue of entry visas for hundreds of thousands of athletes, their families, officials, media and fans to the U.S., asking LA Games organisers whether the process
could be simplified.
Dagmawit Girmay Berhane, an IOC member from Ethiopia, said organisers should make sure that Olympic qualifying tournaments, held in the United States over the next two years, also allowed access to all eligible athletes.
"We have worked very closely with the (U.S.) State Department to design a visa system to allow athletes... to have access to a visa system designed especially for them," Gene Sykes, chairman of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee said.
He added there was ongoing close cooperation with U.S. authorities to make the process as easy as possible.
This is not the first time IOC members raised visa issues with the Games organisers, with the White House having already set up a task force to handle visas.
Last year U.S. President Donald Trump banned citizens of several countries from travel to the U.S.
Olympic Games can attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the world for the 16-day event, with more than 200 countries taking part and over 10,500 athletes competing.
Sykes said this year's soccer World Cup would act as a trial run for visas, albeit on a smaller scale, with only 48 nations taking part in that tournament.
"The FIFA World Cup will also be happening this summer so this entire process of welcoming visitors to the United States... is getting something of a trial run," Sykes said.
TICKET PRICES
IOC members also highlighted LA Games ticket prices, saying they were considerably more expensive than those for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
"When you privately pay for the Games, we have only two revenue streams: sponsorships and tickets. Our ticket prices on average are 17% higher than Paris," LA Games chief Casey Wasserman told the IOC session.
"To be fair the economic opportunity and the four-year difference (from Paris) could have allowed us to go a lot higher than that. So I understand some of the tickets are expensive," Wasserman said.
The LA Games financial model does not have any federal contribution, unlike most Olympics held in other countries, meaning organisers must maximise revenues.
Wasserman, who apologised last week for communicating with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell more than 20 years ago, after the publication of a series of personal emails between the two, was spared any questions on that issue.
New files related to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell's former boyfriend, published by the U.S. Justice Department on Friday, included flirtatious email exchanges between Wasserman, who was married at the time, and Maxwell dating from 2003.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann, editing by Ed Osmond)
