LA 2028: BBC Sport’s Ron Chakraborty looks ahead to bringing UK sports fans the best of the next Summer Olympics
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LA28 will bring the Olympic and Paralympic Games to Los Angeles in 2028, uniting more than 15,000 of the world’s greatest athletes in a celebration of sport, culture and human potential.
The Games will be set against a number of unique venues throughout Southern California, from the Pacific Ocean, to Hollywood stages and the area’s stadiums and arenas.
Los Angeles will become the third city ever to host three Olympic Games, following 1932 and 1984, and will also host its first ever Paralympic Games. Back in the UK, BBC Sport is already thinking ahead to the next Summer Games, which will pose challenges as well as opportunities in programme scheduling.
Primetime opportunities
SVG Europe chatted with BBC Sport’s head of major events and general sport, Ron Chakraborty, about how LA28 will compare to Milano Cortina 2026 and Paris 2024.
He says the time zone will give BBC Sport, “the classic example of a bit of both [in terms of challenges and opportunities] because it’s a really, really tricky time zone. That’s because 9am in LA is 5pm here, so you think it’s a crap time zone for British viewers, but actually you’ve got six or seven hours of primetime sport there.
“A lot of the sports that happen then are ones that we are really, really good at, like rowing and triathlon and so on,” he says, referring to those sports that will be taking place earlier in the day in LA, before the sun reaches its peak.
However, he adds it will not all be so opportunistic for viewers on this side of the pond: “The flip side of it is probably the most high profile sports, like athletics, swimming, and a little bit of gymnastics, that will be on between 2am and 4am in the morning.”
Pushing morning coverage
For BBC Sport, this means it will need to really push its morning coverage, says Chakraborty.
“There’s got to be a huge priority on when people get up in the morning, the first thing they do is grab their phone, and what we give them on their preferred social media platform and so on has to be right.
“In terms of how much do we spend on the linear channels in a nice shiny TV studio and how much we spend making sure we’ve got the right format and the right content on the right platform, that’ll be quite an interesting tug of war if you like, but I’m sure we’ll work out the right compromise.”
He continues: “But that’s a really fascinating question, how you prioritise as a European broadcaster, a west coast of America event. But having said that, we’ve got the football to give us a nice little test run in 2026 with the World Cup. Those 2am kickoffs and how people catch up with them in the morning, that’ll be an interesting little dress rehearsal,” he says.
Kick off times for the 2026 FIFA World Cup will range from 5pm to 5am for viewers in the UK and Europe.
Chakraborty continues: “I see the effort of the World Cup as the dress rehearsal for the Olympics, basically.”
He concludes on the upcoming Winter Olympics: “We’re just hoping it’s going to be an absolute winner on all platforms, and just hoping that we just get some snow obviously, but some fantastic performances, especially from the Great Britain team.”
There will be a lot going for LA28, which will celebrate historic milestones including becoming the first Olympic Games ever to feature more women athletes than men, the debut of new Olympic and Paralympic sports, as well as being the first Games since 1948 to not build any new permanent infrastructure.
Read more:
Milano Cortina 2026: Picture gallery showing the construction of BBC Sport’s Winter Olympics studio