LA28 Olympics adds Honda to top sponsorship tier in push towards US$2.5bn sales target

Japanese carmaker Honda has been named a founding partner of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, making it the first brand to join the event’s top sponsorship tier in nearly four years.

Financial terms of the deal, which also sees Honda become the official automotive sponsor of Team USA for the next two Olympics, have not been disclosed. However, it has secured the highest designation available for local sponsors of LA28, with Delta Airlines reportedly paying US$400 million to become the inaugural founding partner of the Games in 2020.

Comcast is currently the only other founding partner of LA28 after Salesforce opted to end its sponsorship less than three years into the deal.

As part of the agreement, Honda will supply a suite of vehicles to help transport athletes, officials and other stakeholders during the Games, offering an opportunity to showcase the company’s electric range, such as its upcoming Honda 0 Series and Acura RSX

Honda, which first established a presence in the US in Los Angeles in 1969, will also benefit from a multi-platform media collaboration with NBCUniversal, which will spotlight the brand during its coverage of both Milano Cortina 2026 and LA28. 

Local organisers have a stated aim of securing US$2.5 billion in sponsorship revenue for LA28 and are planning to have US$2 billion of that total secured by the end of 2025.

John Slusher, who is the chief executive of US Olympic and Paralympic Properties, the joint venture selling combined partnerships on behalf of LA28 and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), told Sports Business Journal (SBJ) that the deal with Honda means more than US$1.5 billion have now been generated from sponsorship sales.

Meanwhile, speaking to the Los Angeles Times, LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman said the backing of Honda was both financially and strategically significant.

“As a privately funded games, our mandate is to generate the revenue we need to produce these Games,” Wasserman said. “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.”

Credit: https://www.sportspro.com/news/la-2028-olympics-honda-sponsorship-automotive-category-toyota-june-2025/