So… it’s not been a good week in Royals-land. Back on April 30th, the Royals stood at 12-19 after losing a Thursday game to the Homeless A’s. I was tempted to put in a poll: “Will the Royals reach .500 again this season?” They proceeded to win 5-in-a-row and 7 of 9 to get to 19-21. Maybe the team had turned a corner? However, they never got back to .500. With the team at 20-30, I’m not even sure it’s worth posting a poll. It’s going to take a ridiculous hot streak just to get back to .500 now. And
most teams don’t stay hot forever, even good ones. It seems particularly unlikely for a team that still can’t put together much offense, keeps losing starting pitchers, and has a questionable bullpen taking on water.
This is still just… I don’t even know what to say:
But, hey, life is full of surprises. I bet you didn’t expect to see John Bale today.
Hm… news is tough to come by. The Star and KCRoyals.com have no new articles. David Lesky’s and Craig Brown’s latest are recaps from Wednesday night. I think everyone just wanted a breather yesterday.
We’re going to switch things up and start with blogs and then do a couple of listicles for our “official” stories. How’s that sound?
Leading off today, Kevin O’Brien, formerly the Royals Reporter, now at Royals Keep, writes about what Jac needs to do to get into the lineup more:
Against lefties, Cags ranks in the 7th percentile in Z-Swing% (swings on pitches in the strike zone), 11th percentile in O-Swing% (swings outside the strike zone), and 94th percentile in Strike% (percentage of pitches he’s seen that are strikes). Conversely, against righties, he ranks in the 60th percentile in Z-Swing%, 57th percentile in O-Swing%, and 19th percentile in Strike% (lower is good in this case).
So what do these metrics mean?
Against lefties, Cags is swinging more, chasing less, and facing more challenges from pitchers. Unfortunately, he’s being challenged because the production isn’t there against lefties (1st percentile xwOBA), and he tends to chase. His chase issues are also prevalent against breaking pitches.
Blog Roundup?
- Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History–1976 Edition: May 21 – Good offense and good pitching give the Royals a win in Minnesota, while the KC Scouts’ future is on thin ice
- Preston Farr at eightonesix: Brett Squires making noise, CPX kicks off
- Caleb Moody at KOK: 3 bright spots that are being overshadowed by Royals’ embarrassing downward spiral
- (Also) Caleb Moody at KOK: Royals must consider one drastic decision before entertaining trade deadline sale
Two listicles, as promised.
At The Athletic ($), Jim Bowden asks if eight veterans are slumping or in their decline phase. A prominent Royal made the list:
Salvador Perez, C, Kansas City Royals
My best guess: Decline is startingPerez, 36, is a future Hall of Famer, team leader and the face of the Royals franchise. He was a star during this spring’s World Baseball Classic, but he’s showing signs that age is catching up to him. His early-season slump could be due to playing in the WBC and not having a normal spring training because last year he hit 30 homers and drove in 100 runs and he played like an All-Star. However, he’s slashing just .199/.249/.343 — the worst slashline of his career.
Like Machado, Perez has seen his bat speed decline some this season, though Perez’s attack angle remains solid (12 degrees). He’s chasing pitches at a very high rate (46.4 percent, in the 1st percentile for the league), which could be a sign he’s trying to swing early to make up for the slower bat, or could just be an approach issue.
He can still contribute, but the Royals probably need to give him more days off, especially with rookie catcher Carter Jensen on the roster. Keep in mind decline can be gradual or sudden, there is no consistent pattern across the league.
At ESPN, Kiley McDaniel updates his Top 50 prospects list. One quick-rising Royal made the list:
50 FV tier
43. Josh Hammond, SS, Kansas City Royals (Previous: 132)
We talked about Olympic movies last week, but let’s talk about something else Olympic-related. For those of you who don’t like the Olympics, find the IOC on a level of corruption of FIFA, or whatever else – you’re probably not wrong. This just isn’t your Friday. Maybe you don’t want to read about frustration. I get that. We have some funny stuff down in SotD. But for the rest of you, buckle in for a 6000-word OT. Besides, today’s post isn’t exactly about the Olympics proper. It’s also about game theory.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always loved the Olympics. Back in 1996, I remember we drove to where the torch passed through Houston, and I still have some old photographs of the event. I’m an Olympic junkie, binging as much as I can for two weeks straight every couple of years. I love the idea of the games, and I love the spectacle of it, even as I know there is a lot of imperfection.
To go to the Olympics has always been a true bucket list item for me. I’ve had it on my travel spreadsheet for years, and we’ve now started making plans. We’ve been setting aside money and points for tickets and accommodations. I entered the 2024 Paris Olympic ticket draw so I could experience the process. And I’ve tried to read up as much as I can to prepare.
This post is about where we are in the LA28 Olympics ticketing process and plans going forward. If you have designs on going, maybe this will help you out. For those involved with the 2026 World Cup, a lot of this will feel similar.
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If you’ve read Friday Rumblings long enough, you know how I like to do this: link after link of relevant data to back up what I’m saying. However, some of this data is intentionally opaque…
Just to get an example, I tried to get a high-level answer to a simple question: how many total tickets are available for the Olympics? You’ll see the number “14 million” thrown around over and over – but it’s always with the caveat of “14 million for Olympics and Paralympics”. The Paralympics is a fine event, but we won’t be there for that portion of the games; I’m trying to determine how many tickets are available specifically for the Olympic games. I searched using search engines, I searched using Reddit, I even tried to argue with Gemini for 15 minutes. But it kept producing link after link that didn’t have the relevant data. I swear, calling LLMs on their BS can be a full-time job. NOTE: I wrote this paragraph a month ago and maybe it’s been clarified sinc…. but I doubt it.
We’re going to use an estimate of 11M Olympic tickets and 3M Paralympic tickets, going off of recent history. For Paris, they sold 9.5M Olympic tickets and 2.5M Paralympic tickets for a roughly 80/20 split. An estimate of 11/3 puts us in the same ballpark.
Why does this matter? In the end, with a lottery and opaque pricing, supply matters. A friend of mine* pithily summed up my pursuit: “it’s just one big game of chicken”. Sort of, yeah. There’s also a lot of backup plans and opportunity cost to add to this game theory.
*yes, I have nerdy friends who like to tabletop stuff like this with me
It’s also going to matter for pricing breakdowns of tickets. From the link above:
In total, around 14 million tickets will be available for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games combined, with sales taking place in several phases and the Paralympic ticket draw beginning in 2027.
- For the Olympics, more than one million tickets across all sports are priced at USD 28;
- Nearly half of the tickets for the Olympics are under USD 200; and
- More than 75 per cent of tickets for the Olympics, including finals, will be under USD 400.
- Only roughly five per cent of all tickets are over USD 1,000.
Looking back at Paris 2024, many ticketing aspects were similar to LA28:
- 1M tickets at EUR 24 (as opposed to $28)
- Nearly 50% of tickets reserved for the general public will have a price less than or equal to EUR 50 (compared to “nearly half under $200”)
- “And almost a third of the general public tickets for medal events will be offered at EUR 100 or less.” (no claims like that for LA28)
- “Adaptive pricing” used in Paris (“ We’re not using dynamic pricing in this [first] round of ticket drops,” [LA28 CEO Reynold] Hoover said “We may adjust it in the future.“)
- “The 15% of the general public tickets offered at the highest rates make it possible for millions of tickets to be made available at lower prices.”
- Hospitality packages – we’ll get to that a little bit later
The ticketing phases have already deviated significantly from Paris. Here were the 2024 ticketing phases:
- Phase 1: December 2022-January 2023 registration; mid February-mid March ticketing slots; Lottery-based; Had to buy in sets of 3 sessions (i.e. you could not buy single sports) and not all sports available (like 100M dash); 3.5M tickets sold (1/3rd of total tickets)
- Phase 2: March-May 2023; May ticketing slots; Lottery-based single ticket sales (1.5M tickets expected to sell but 1.89M sold; 5.2M total sold to the public and 1.6M given to corporate partners at this point)
- Phase 3: July 2023; Sports outside of Paris (football, basketball, handball, sailing)
- “Surprise” Phase: November 2023; Not a named phase and not many details except to say that 400K more tickets were on sale; no lottery: first-come, first-served; Maximum of 30 tickets with previous tickets included in the order
- “Surprise” Phase II: February 2024; Not a named phase, but tickets for every sport were on sale (not sure about the quantity; possibly similar to other Surprise phase); no lottery: first-come, first-served; Maximum of 30 tickets with previous tickets included in the order
- Resale App: May 2024; Seriously – they didn’t go live with resale until a couple of months before the game and there were strict limits on resale prices; over 270K tickets were up for sale a few days before the Opening Ceremony
- Tickets left? There were roughly 1M tickets left as we neared the games, mainly in football, basketball, and handball.
Here’s what we’ve seen so far from LA:
- Phase 1: January-March 2026 registration; April ticketing slots; Lottery-based; 12-ticket limit (plus 12 more for Football and 4 for Opening/Closing Ceremony); LA/OKC Phase 0 lottery; 4M tickets sold (estimated more than 1/3rd of total tickets)
- Phase 2: April-July 2026 registration; August ticketing slots; Lottery-based; 12-ticket limit per person between Phase 1/2
- Later Phases: no idea yet; likely no Phase 3 like Paris as all tickets outside of LA were already included in Phase 1
- Resale Platform: Launches “in 2027”; includes AXS/Eventim (primary ticket providers) and partners at Ticketmaster and Sports Illustrated Tickets; Cynically, and looking at that partner list, I’m guessing LA28 won’t have those same strict resale limits that Paris did and they will be happy encourage high prices as they will get to take, I dunno, a 25% cut of every overpriced resale just like FIFA
One significant wrinkle was the Phase 0 lottery. The first few days were only open to residents of LA and Oklahoma City (OKC is hosting a handful of events). One day before the Phase 1 lottery slots opened, LA28 announced that there would be no refresh of tickets between Phase 0 and Phase 1. This led to a /lot/ of anger and disappointment. As noted in the official announcement: “95% of all tickets under $100 were sold during the LA & OKC Locals Presale” and, ahead of the drop “LA28 claims 30% of remaining tickets are under $200, users report that marquee events—specifically the Opening and Closing Ceremonies—often show only premium seats costing upwards of $5,000”.
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I’m going to try and make that sound less abstract with some examples below. The first thing to keep in mind is that you aren’t buying a specific seat, you’re buying a “zone”. Let’s make it Royals-centric, too. Pretend tomorrow’s game is in the Olympics and you want to buy 4 tickets.
Here’s the available zones and prices:
- $1000 for Zone A (Diamond Club)
- $500 for Zone B (Lower Deck Infield)
- $250 for Zone C (Lower Deck Outfield)
- $150 for Zone D (Loge)
- $80 for Zone E (Outfield/Fountains)
- $50 for Zone F (Upper Deck Infield)
- $30 for Zone G (Upper Deck Outfield)
You can already see some problems. If you pay $30 just to get in the door, you can’t get too upset if you’re in the back of 401 or the front row of 433. However, if you’re paying $500, I’m guessing you care a lot if you’re at the back of 217 versus 2 rows behind the Royals dugout. I would even argue that knowing which specific seat you’re getting could be the difference between going to the game or staying home.
Now imagine you won the first day of the Phase 1 lottery. But, when you log in, you see that Phase 0 bought up all the seats under $100 and you’re left trying to decide which of Zones A-D you want, if any. You would have happily paid $50 for Zone F and not cared what you got, but that’s not available. Now you’re playing roulette with tickets three times as much: do you end up in the sun out in 324 or maybe you get some of the nice shaded ones in the front row of 309. Never mind if you are in the latter days of Phase 1. Now all the $150 and $250 seats are sold out so it’s $500+ or don’t go.
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It can’t possibly be that bad, right? Well, yes and no. Let’s look at some examples to illustrate. There were folks on Reddit who did a wonderful service of posting all available tickets and the lowest prices.
- April 9 (1st day of Phase 1)
- April 11
- April 15 AM
- April 16 PM (right before last drop)
These events were already sold out by April 9: Artistic Gymnastics, Artistic Swimming, BMX Freestyle/Racing, Climbing, Cycling (Track), Diving, Flag Football, Golf, Modern Pentathlon, Mountain Bike, Opening Ceremony, Rhythmic Gymastics, Rowing, Shooting, Skateboarding, Squash, Table Tennis, Tennis, Trampoline Gymnastics, Weightlifting. This doesn’t mean they were sold out of all tickets for the Olympics. But it means their Phase 0/1 tickets were sold out. Basically, if you didn’t live in LA/OKC (or have a way to fake that you did), you had no access to any of these sports. Not “no $28 tickets”, not “you could pay a lot and still get tickets” – no tickets available at all.
On April 9th, here’s the cheapest you could get for these sports: Athletics (Track) medal round ($744), Baseball Bronze Medal Game ($465; Gold was sold out), Beach Volleyball ($558 for prelims – sold out by end of 1st day), Equestrian ($292 – sold out by end of 1st day), Closing Ceremony ($4961), Swimming ($1116 for prelims), and Wrestling ($396). That’s not to say there aren’t some good events with decent tickets available, but that’s a lot off the table or at prohibitively high prices before most people ever had a chance at them.
Let’s say you had a drop on April 17th (the last drop). You see the list on April 9th and start making a plan. Here’s how it went for various sports (the parenthetical :
- (ARC03) Archery Mixed Finals -> started at $241, was at $477 before your time slot
- (ATH06) Track and Field (4×100 relay, pole vault, and more) -> started at $744 -> up to $1116
- (BDM01-15) Any Badminton prelim -> started at $204 -> $303 -> sold out before your chance
- (BSB08) Baseball quarterfinal in Dodger Stadium -> started at $235 -> $328 -> $403
- (BOX18-24) Boxing medal events -> started at $396 -> most sold out, a couple available at $738
- (HBL) Handball prelims -> some started at $74, others at $148 -> all at $242 or sold out
- (JUD) Judo -> some prelims at $155, some medals at $297 -> sold out
- (RU7) Rugby Sevens -> a few prelims at $111, others under $200, including quarter/semifinals -> only 2 prelims available at $254
Ahead of the final day of Phase 1, the only tickets available for under $200 were Cricket prelims ($100/$174/$192, depending on session), Field Hockey prelims ($174), and some of the soccer matches outside of LA (Nashville and St. Louis, specifically).
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Aside: For all the talk online about how awful LA28 handled this, I’ll refer back to this article that came out ahead of Phase 2 for Paris: “Many French people were indeed disappointed by the first phase, because even if they were drawn, most of the disciplines were already unavailable and the prices were inaccessible.” Sound familiar?
Also, if you want to compare ticket prices between Paris and LA, there are substantial differences.
Here’s a link to the Paris ticket prices.
Here’s a link to a spreadsheet that a Redditor has put together of LA ticket prices.
A quick spot check of prices (not including the $28 tickets that are impossible gets) tells me that most prices are 2-4x what they were for Paris. C’est la Vie.
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And this is where I come into the story. My wife and I both entered the lottery. You’re only allowed one account per person, but multiple people in a household can enter. Considering there are 3 of us in the household and a 12-ticket limit between Phase 1 and Phase 2, that means 4 events for each of us. If I’m flying out there and paying what I’m going to pay for a hotel, I’d like to see a fair number of events. While 4 is not enough, 8 is a good start until the secondary market opens up.
With my luck, I wasn’t picked for Phase 1 at all, and my wife was picked for the very last day of Phase 1. Sad trombone. Those hypothetical plans above? I was that person making them. Not for those sports, specifically. But I watched tickets melt away, day-by-day. Needless to say, the plans that I made at the start of the Phase were not the plans I have now. I’ve set aside a decent chunk of cash for this trip and did not expect tickets to be cheap. However, there are “$100-$200 not-cheap-tickets” and there are “family-of-three costs a mortgage payment for one event not-cheap-tickets” and the latter was almost all of what was left.
There’s a few other bits before we really dive in.
First off, there’s timing. We’re not going to be able to stay for the entire Olympic Games. Lodging will be exorbitant, so we’re probably limiting ourselves to 1 week in LA. It will also be tricky. I don’t trust rentals one bit. There are legions of stories of Airbnb hosts cancelling right before large events because they could sell for more. With hotels, you have a little more leverage because of their parent company. Marriott, Hilton, etc, have literally thousands of rooms around the LA area in the event of an issue. There’s a risk of overbooking your room, but they’re not going to yank your reservation a week before you arrive just to sell it for $200 more. With us arriving before the games officially start, it’s more likely we won’t be the ones bumped, but someone arriving later. I’m also not above reserving multiple refundable reservations and cancelling an unused one (we did that for the 2024 eclipse). As noted above, I have a fair number of hotel points saved up with a couple of different chains so that may also help. Also, many people did this for Paris: reserve at an acceptable-ish price early and then rebook late when prices come down. Again, World Cup much?
Here’s the LA28 schedule. For comparison, here’s Paris’s schedule. The biggest quirk compared to years past is that they’ve basically swapped Track and Swimming. For LA, Track is the first week and Swimming is the second week. They’ve also stretched out Artistic Gymnastics to cover almost a week and a half, but it’s still front-loaded. Baseball starts before the Opening Ceremony and ends in the first week. Also, there are more preliminaries on days T-2 and T-1 than in the past.
After making a list of sports/events we’d like to see, the first week seemed like the obvious choice. Even beyond that, my wife and I thought it would be good to go out there for some of the prelims before the Opening Ceremony and leave around the middle of the first week. That way, we might get in before prices are at their maximum. We can enjoy a week of Olympics up close and then fly back home to binge the remaining week and a half of the Olympics.
Geography is going to play a big role, too. Anyone who has ever been out to LA knows that it’s huge. And this is coming from a guy who lives in the endless expanse of concrete known as Houston. It’s also full of traffic. At all hours. Every. single. day. They’ve made great strides in their mass transit in the last few decades, but this isn’t NYC or DC. The Olympic sites are scattered all around the LA metro area: from Venice Beach to Pomona, from Pasadena down to Long Beach and all the way out to Anaheim. There will be people who think you can get from Venice Beach to Anaheim in 40 minutes. I drove the 18 miles from Venice Beach to Dodger Stadium downtown on a random Saturday afternoon: it took over 2 hours. And then, after the game, the drive down to Anaheim took more than an hour. At midnight!
Here’s the LA28 map. The obvious thing that jumps out to me is that you need to pair events at the same area. For instance, the LA Galaxy play at what they are calling “Carson Stadium”. That hosts Archery and Rugby Sevens. But venues within walking distance also host Tennis, Track Cycling, and Field Hockey. So, if you want to see Rugby Sevens (/I/ want to see Rugby Sevens), then pair it with one of those other sports. There’s a bunch of sports down in Long Beach or up in Van Nuys (“Valley Zone”) – pick two or three and make a day of it.
Lastly, I’m going there with my wife and son. My wife has a much lower tolerance for uncertainty. I don’t like doing it, but I’ve walked into a situation where I don’t have tickets, and I’m at the mercy of last-minute purchases via a resale app or buying from a scalper. He and I will eventually find a level where the number of $20s I hand him is equal to one of the tickets I want. This isn’t going to work if I have a wife and/or kid taking away my leverage. Also, buying tickets in threes is hard.
A side variable on that is that we don’t know which teams are playing in which games. Anything with Team USA will carry a significant premium. That’s something that may come into play if I get tickets in 2028. It’s not a factor now.
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Now that we’re 3000 words in, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.
The first four days (Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday) are easy.
Since they’re before the games officially start, Wednesday and Thursday are limited in that they have no medals awarded. But they have some really obvious pairings or choices:
- Long Beach: Water Polo (M)/Handball (M)
- Carson: Rugby Sevens (W)/Field Hockey (W)
- Inglewood: Basketball (W) or Pomona: Cricket (W) paired with Downtown: Baseball (M)
Pomona is really out there. Getting to Dodger Stadium is hard on a good day. My son really enjoyed learning about Cricket when we were in New Zealand this past winter, but I don’t know how to make that work. The Cricket matches start at 9am and 6pm. Those are rotten times for something with a minimum one-hour travel time. In my perfect world, we do Long Beach one day, Carson the other. There are more days for games at Dodger Stadium. But if Basketball/Baseball fall into our lap, I’ll take it.
The only thing on Friday is the Opening Ceremony. After 2 days of chasing around LA, time to rest most of the day. That evening, we either get tickets to the ceremony or we find some Olympic village area or whatever to watch it with other people.
While the lottery is one way to get tickets, the other way is hospitality. If you’ve ever tried to go to a big event in the last decade or so, you’ve seen these packages. Along with your ticket, you get some light snacks, an area in the arena with a paid bar, and maybe some gift shop trinket. But, really, what it’s all about is locking in a ticket that isn’t available otherwise by paying 2-10x face value.
Here’s the LA Hospitality site. I didn’t realise this initially, but they had access to tickets before any other presale. Also, their inventory has fluctuated throughout the drop. They were getting restocks, even when the lottery pool was not.
If you’re curious, the ticket my wife and I both want the most is Opening Ceremony. I would love to see the Parade of Nations in person. You can’t just order those on the site. You have to fill out a form and then put in a deposit (rumoured to be $5K) for On Location, the hospitality service, to contact you directly. When they call you, tickets start at $5K each and you have to order 3 other sports through hospitality. It’s also rumoured (read: Reddit) there are a couple of other high-profile events that have the same process: 100M track nights, Gymnastics finals, and the men’s Basketball final. We’re no longer talking “mortgage payment”. Now we’re talking about paying for an entire car.
My wife really wanted to see Gymnastics at the Olympics. While lottery tickets were long since sold out and the hospitality finals tickets were way too much, the preliminary men’s sessions were surprisingly “reasonable”. We picked up 3 for “less than a mortgage payment”. Our Saturday morning is now set, and with an event that was near the top of my wife’s list. The things we do for love.
Of note: hospitality tickets don’t count against your 12 ticket limit. One of the underrated games of “chicken” we’re playing with the system is with that “12 ticket per account limit”. As above, even if both my wife and I get picked for the next lottery, that still only gives us 8 events. I’m guessing resale tickets won’t count against that limit and the limits will loosen or go away entirely as we get to last-minute ticket drops. But, for now, it’s something to be cognizant of.
Having secured our Saturday morning, there are a couple of nice things to pair with Gymnastics. All are at the Los Angeles Convention Center, a couple of blocks away from Crypto.com Arena (or DTLA Arena, as it’s called on the map). My first choice would be a set of Judo medal finals. There are also Fencing finals, but they’re later in the evening. There’s also some Table Tennis prelims. I’d watch any of those. However, both the Fencing and Table Tennis tickets were sold out in Phase 0 and the Judo session started Phase 1 at $471 and sold out long before it was our turn.
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The second half of the trip is more wide open. I was trying to plan around “anchor” events like the aforementioned gymnastics. Pick another couple of events we really want and build the rest of the trip around those.
Obviously, I’ve seen some of the best athletes in the world play team sports in person. I’ve seen Mike Trout’s only postseason home run (but that game was fun for other reasons). I’ve watched Steph Curry and Kevin Durant crush my team’s dreams in Game 7 of a series that almost certainly determined the NBA title. I’ve watched shots that have made it into NCAA tournament lore (and some infamous ones against my school). I’ve seen one of the most dramatic finishes to the Indianapolis 500 in recent memory. Those have all had amazing emotional reactions – some positive, some negative. In short, I’ve been lucky enough to witness some amazing sporting moments in my life. It’s really fun, and I’d like to do it again.
Some of those you can plan for. If you’re going to a playoff game, you’re likely to see drama. Others, you stumble upon. In 2012, we found ourselves in Omaha for a wedding. We couldn’t figure out why plane tickets were so expensive until we discovered the Olympic swim trials were the same week. As we had a free morning before the wedding, we picked up some cheap seats and had a blast.
If you’re unfamiliar, like we were, here’s the lowdown on that. To make it to the swim trials, you have to post an eligible time at a sanctioned meet. We got to see scores of (mostly) college kids and their families trying to live out the Olympic dreams. For the 800M freestyle, we got to see Janet Evans try to make a comeback at 40. There was a lot of buzz around a 15-year-old Maryland swimming prodigy named Katie Ledecky who easily won her heat.
But the real treat was watching Michael Phelps, in his prime. Sure, he was swimming in a preliminary round. And, yes, he smoked all the others in his heat, swimming at half speed. And, yes, it was a sleepy Saturday morning in Omaha. But even with all that, the sound of the crowd was an awesome memory. I want to see that amped up to 11, with medals on the line at the Olympics.
Sidebar: If you can’t make the Olympics, the 2028 Swimming or Track or pick-your-sport trials will likely be very approachable.
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All that is to say, there’s one sport I might pay a significant premium for: a track final. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is experience the final 50 meters of a major race. I want to listen to the crowd swell, watch everyone on their feet, and bear witness to some of the fastest people on planet Earth, all in the historical LA Memorial Coliseum during Prime Time Olympic coverage. Now that would be my anchor event.
Below are the days and events that correspond with when we might be there:
- ATH02 Sat JUL15 1700-2015 W100m, M10000m, WShotPut
- ATH04 Sun JUL16 1515-1855 M100m, MSPut, WHThrow, X4x400
- ATH06 Mon JUL17 1700-2015 X4x100, MPVault
- ATH08 Tue JUL18 1550-1855 MHJump, MDiscus, W5000m, W800m
- ATH10 Wed JUL19 1600-1840 WDiscus, MLJump, M1500m, M400H
- ATH12 Thu JUL20 1530-1830 WPVault, MHThrow, W400H
The big problem with the Athletic (what they’re calling “Track & Field”) events is that there are no cheap seats in the house. Here’s the zone map for the LA Coliseum. The cheapest get-in-the-door tickets are $104 (Category I) and $186 (Category H). That price would be great. However, some of those have a horribly obstructed view. I don’t mean “hey, there’s a pillar in the way” obstructed-view like you can get at Fenway. I mean, “you can’t even see the field” obstructed view. Even some of the Zone B seats that cost more than $2000(!) could have that problem.
If you eliminate Categories H and I. Prices go up fast. Category G is the next lowest at $403, Category F is $620, and Category E is $744. Those are the only tickets under $1000. We’ve jumped well past the “mortgage payment” ticket price.
Let’s try to game plan if this is even a possibility. If I were offered the chance to buy ATH02, ATH04, or ATH06 at $403, I would jump without hesitation, even as my bank account screamed a little. If I had an option ATH04 (men’s 100M dash and mixed 4×400 relay) at $620 or maybe ATH02 (women’s 100M dash and men’s 10000M) or ATH06 (mixed 4×100 relay, men’s decathlon finals, and men’s pole vault with Mondo Duplantis)… man, I’d need to really think about what other events I’d give up to make that fit. But those are questions I need to ask myself and my wife before we get into Phase 2 if we’re lucky enough to get a good drop time.
Of course, these options were never on the table. ATH04 started Phase 4 over $1000 and ATH02 and ATH06 were at $744. By the time it got to our slot, ATH04 was sold out, ATH02 was $2047, and ATH06 was at $1116. As for hospitality: lowest prices were “make a deposit”, $2500 per ticket, and $2500 per ticket. That’s a nope.
As an alternative, there are morning track sessions. But those are mostly prelims with a single medal event thrown in so they can charge a premium (ATH05 has triple jump, ATH07 has prelims only, ATH09 and ATH11 have 3000M steeplechase finals). Those all started out in the $400-$500 range and were only available at $750 or above by the time it got to our draw. If I’m going to be paying a premium, I want to do that on a premium event.
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The other “premium” event I’d like to see is baseball at Dodger Stadium. There has been a lot of noise about MLB players playing, particularly in the wake of the 2026 WBC’s success. Of course, nothing in baseball is set in stone until the impending lockout is resolved. But part of the reason why baseball starts before the Opening Ceremony was to accommodate the 2028 MLB All-Star Game. This could be another awesome banner event for baseball, and I think even Manfred realizes it.
Opening rounds are Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then it’s Quarterfinals Monday, Semifinals Tuesday, and Bronze/Gold Medal Games on Wednesday. There are two games, 11 am and 7 pm, every day. That means either long days or later days, considering the logistics of getting to/from Dodger Stadium. For an early game (in the summer, in LA, no less), you can’t have another event before 4pm. For the late game, your previous event needs to be done before 4pm to make it to Dodger Stadium for the game.
The Category map for Dodger Stadium looks, well, even more granular than what I described above. Honestly, it’s not horrible and baseball was available-ish. At the start of Phase 1, prelim games were already sold out of all tickets under $200 (Categories F-J) with Category E being the cheapest ($204). However, Category E was also available for all elimination games except for the Gold Medal game: Quarterfinals ($235), Semifinals ($303), and Bronze Medal ($365). I don’t… hate those prices. Of course, by our timeslot, prelims ranged from $205-$341, Quarters were $403, Semis were $788, and Bronze was $949. I noped out of all that, but it was a data point for future planning.
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Beyond that, I just started blue-skying what to do for the other days. I’m pretty sure you’ve already got the idea that the pickings were very slim by the time it got to us. There weren’t many (any?) bargains to be had so I didn’t want to commit to anything until I lined up another anchor event or two.
Sunday is a complete blank slate. Sure, I’d love to get ATH04, but it’s not happening. There are so many events that day and I’d like to leave it flexible to maybe see sports I don’t get a chance on other days.
Monday, my most realistic anchor event is ATH06. If I get the first spot in the next lottery, I’m making a beeline for that (and the Opening Ceremony). I can figure out the rest of the week from there. Plus, many downtown morning events can pair with it: Boxing, Judo, or Table Tennis prelims. Heck, maybe even the 11m Baseball quarterfinal, if I’m daring.
If not that, there are a lot of directions this could go. Want something different? Equestrian and Diving events in Arcadia and Pasadena fit into the schedule, though both are difficult-ish tickets. If I don’t think I can get an evening track event, settle for the morning track events and pair that with some Badminton?
Tuesday has some other potential anchor events. The women’s Artistic Gymnastics team final is that nigh—- yeah, there’s no chance in the world I can get that ticket. Baseball is now onto the Semifinals. ATH08 is not my favorite Track night, but the women’s 800M will be great, and there are 3 other finals (women’s 5000M, men’s High Jump, men’s Discus) and the men’s 200M prelims. Maybe I’ve been overlooking it and should put this up on the same level as ATH06.
There’s the Equestrian/Diving combo again. Or maybe head out to the Valley for a whole day? Modern Pentathlon medals (hopefully no one punches a horse this time), 3×3 Basketball prelims (which were easy tickets), and women’s street prelim for Skateboarding. That would be one heck of a day.
Wednesday is the last day we’re planning on being there. If we really had a great opportunity for Thursday, maybe we could stretch the trip out. But, we’re planning on this being our last day. Baseball gold medal game for a reasonable price? Pair that up with one of the downtown morning events like the semifinals for Table Tennis or Fencing? That would be an amazing way to end the trip. If that’s not available, head out to the Valley for Skateboard and 3×3 Basketball, assuming we haven’t already made it out there? Some combination of Archery, Field Hockey, and/or Tennis in Carson? Long Beach has Rowing, Beach Volleyball, Shooting, Handball, and Water Polo. You get the idea – the first week has a lot of events in a lot of places. Just have to find a couple that fit together.
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In my perfect, wonderful world, one (or both) of us wins the lottery for phase two. We get reasonable(-ish) tickets for one Track & Field session (ATH02/04/06/08) and one major baseball game (semis or bronze/gold). Track is still just going to cost a lot, no matter what, but it can be had for low hundreds of dollars and not thousands. Baseball can reasonably be had for under $200-$300. Then we build Sunday-Wednesday around those marquee events. Even if only one of us gets a premium time slot, we can try to fill in some other lower-demand event days with those 12 tickets.
It would look something like this and comes in at a $2500ish ticket budget per person for the whole trip:
- TUE JUL 11 FLY IN – NO EVENTS
- WED JUL 12 Long Beach prelims: Water Polo (93/167), Handball (74/148)
- THU JUL 13 Carson: Field Hockey prelim (93), Rugby quarters (117/186)
- FRI JUL 14 AM Rest; Opening Ceremony/Party
- SAT JUL 15 DTLA: Gymnastics prelim (420), Judo medal (297)
- SUN JUL 16 TBD: Anything!
- MON JUL 17 Boxing (28/210) or Table Tennis (68/142); Track medal: 4×100, pole vault, etc (403)
- TUE JUL 18 Valley: Petathlon medal (74/186), 3×3 Basketball (155), Skateboarding (124)
- WED JUL 19 Table Tennis (68/142) or Fencing (111/98) semis; Baseball Final (279)
- THU JUL 20 FLY OUT
That’s a lot of money. But we’ve already saved up for it. Also, the cost is spread out over an entire trip. And it’s a cost that we pay for bit-by-bit over the next two years as tickets are issued. I’m not saying I’m happy or comfortable doing it. But it’s in the ballpark of what I’m willing to spend on a lifelong bucket list item for my wife and I to share with our son.
This plan sounded a lot better at the start of Phase 1 when I was formulating it. I assumed no $28 tickets, but did have a decent number of tickets from cheaper categories. The idea isn’t that I’d be able to get all of these events but I’d be able to get some of them and then pivot to alternatives or build in some rest time. Also, this phase helped with gauging supply and demand for future phases.
Notes on this plan:
- Some Water Polo days were sold out, and others were $248. But Handball was $148, Rugby Sevens $111, and Field Hockey $93. Again, I’m not expecting $28 tickets, but $100-$200 for most events was what I had budgeted for. The Thursday backup plan: Baseball ($204) and Basketball ($171) was still tolerable.
- JUD02 for Saturday was available, even if it was $471 so we might be able to get it cheaper another time; FEN09 for Wednesday was $303
- ATH06/ATH08 were $744… would it be possible to get those for $400 if there’s not a Phase 0 to snag all the tickets?
- Maybe Baseball Gold is unlikely, but Baseball Bronze at $365 wasn’t bad, and we’d just do something that evening instead of that morning
- A few of those events were sold out or not even offered in Phase 1: Skateboard, Table Tennis, Pentathlon, Boxing; but they weren’t anchor events that I was tying other things to; they were fun things to fill in around the others
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Back to that big game of “chicken”. This is where the opaque nature of “how many tickets are still left” comes into play. Optimists think “hey, only a quarter or third of tickets are gone: 4M/14M”. My best guess is that we’ve already blown through 45% of available tickets. I’m basing this on an estimated 4M/9M. The 9M comes from 11M Olympic-2M corporate tickets and how Paris’s ticketing phases had diminishing returns. That’s… not great.
Phase 0 really messed up calculations, and there’s not a lot of data from it. There are a couple of posts like this and this, but nothing comprehensive like the ones from Phase 1 that I linked to above. Quotes like this: “Cheapest tickets for track and field was $380, and that was for the non-medal days; Cheapest medal ticket was at $410” give me some hope that a good time slot in Phase 2 will still have some of what I’m looking for at the price I’m looking for.
That said, if there’s another presale in Phase 2, it’s time to recalibrate. If Phase 2 looks like Phase 1 but with fewer tickets, higher demand, and more information – again, recalibrate. I’d really like to see a medal ceremony or two so maybe I just will have to grab what I can for the days I’m there, even if it’s not in my preferred events.
If possible, I think I want to get most or all of my “in-demand” tickets before the resale platform launches. The 2026 World Cup feels like a warm-up for this: lots of people paying lots of premium prices that are only going up. That said, before Phase 2, we’ll have more data from the World Cup. Are prices going up, only to crater when we get closer to the games? Paris had those million unsold seats and another 300K at face value on the resale app. I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of that, but these tickets do cost a lot more.
So I think this is the plan
If one or both of us get early Phase 2 time slots, go straight for those premium anchor events. Get ATH02/04/06/08 if under $500 and Baseball Gold Medal (or Bronze Medal) game. Check in on Opening Ceremony and the Gymnastics finals. Check out. You can check out more than once, so long as you haven’t hit your 12-ticket limit. Once those are locked in, see what else is available. There’s no harm in maxing out the 12 tickets (4 events) if they’re events you want. Look at JUD02, Skateboarding, Diving, Equestrian – some of those hard-to-get events. I can always fill in with resale or future phases.
If we’re not selected at all, there’s not really a decision to make, just an acknowledgement of the situation. There will be other phases. There will be resale. There’s even hospitality, in desperation, but I’d get to see fewer events because of the cost.
If we’re later in Phase 2, that’s where it gets tough. Will future phases have a 12-ticket limit? What if prices are like late Phase 1 where it’s $200+ for lower preference sports like on Wednesday and Thursday? I should probably still hold off. Or should I snag a couple of “higher demand lower tier” sports? Do I pay a little extra if I can get into that Rugby Sevens quarterfinal? Should I snag a baseball game on Thursday and assume that elimination games are just not meant to be for me?
Right now, I’m assuming resale will be ideal for those prelim events that were available at the end of Phase 1 (Field Hockey, Rugby Sevens, 3×3 Basketball, etc). I don’t want to “waste” my 12-ticket limit on those and then not be able to get higher demand events in future phases. Heck, I might even luck out with those being cheaper than retain or finding something else quite fun at the last minute. But I could be completely wrong on those
If you’re still here, thanks for reading! Some days, this is what life is like inside my brain. Got any thoughts about what you would do in these shoes? Are you planning on going and have your own plan? Have you ever been to the Olympics? Have any favorite Olympic memories?
Something else for those who didn’t want to wade through that wall of text? How about some SotD fun?
Earlier this year, I mentioned that when I play most modern sports games, I “[spend] hours as a GM, trying to break the trading, drafting, and training system and not playing a single down of [sports]”. JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, RIGHT?!?
I was playing Madden a couple of weeks ago and kept hearing this song with an earworm that sounded like “Elevator Operator”. Of course, that can’t be right. So I pop on Shazam and, sure enough, it actually is a song called “Elevator Operator” by a band called Electric Callboy. So I did what I always do when I run across something like this: I hit up Wikipedia.
Electric Callboy, formerly Eskimo Callboy, is a German electronicore band formed in Castrop-Rauxel in 2010. Initially noted for their serious lyrics and post-hardcore sound, they underwent a line-up and name change during the early 2020s and have since garnered mainstream attention for their comedic songs, live shows, and music videos.
I also had to look up the lyrics because, well, the first bit has that “unclean” metal sound – grunts and growls where you can’t make out a thing:
You heard about a man, the lift controller
The lever king, I told ya
Hop in and let the journey begin
Oh, this really is about an Elevator Operator. I mean, as much as any song is about what its lyrics say it is. After we get to the “clean” hook:
I wanna show you my world
Where the beat goes up and down
Let me open the door
Elevator operator
Then I look up the video and, well… it’s glorious:
Bonus bits, since you know, we’re not already almost to 8000 words. In the final scene, there’s a little metal baby in the elevator. Someone in the YouTube comments mentioned how it’s a reference to a collaboration with Babymetal called “Ratatata”.
Wait… hold on? What?!? I don’t know if I could name any of their songs, but I’ve heard of Babymetal. Go on:
“Ratatata” (stylized in all caps) is a song by Japanese kawaii metal band Babymetal and German electronicore band Electric Callboy.
Please be as awesome as it could be.
Oh, it is.
The video starts with the German metal band smashing into a room, wearing leather jackets and helmets that look like they’re fashioned out of disco balls. Then we cut to three very Japanese singers bursting with song and guitar. The unclean, low register of Electric Callboy mixes so well with the clean, high register of Babymetal. It’s such a weird fever-dream of a collaboration that absolutely works in a weird, poppy way.
Two for the price of one today. Here’s BABYMETAL x ElectricCallboy with “RATATATA”
