The organizers of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games (LA28) have announced coffee shop chain Starbucks as the events' official coffee partner.
Through the deal, Starbucks branding will be present in multiple areas across those games, including at the athletes' village, where it will establish a coffeehouse location.
Similarly, Starbucks locations will be present across the games’ competition venues, as well as volunteer hubs and other priority locations around the city.
Starbucks will also sponsor Team USA for the games, and will additionally support coverage of the event on US TVs through an associated partnership with domestic rightsholder NBCUniversal, gaining exclusivity as the sole coffee brand featured across NBCUniversal coverage, with potential opportunities for brand-centric storytelling.
NBCUniversal renewed its partnership with the IOC earlier in 2025, with the deal now running through the 2036 games.
That deal is worth $3 billion across those two Olympic Games, and comes as an extension to the current tie-up between the pair, unveiled in May 2014 and running through the 2032 Olympics (Brisbane, Australia).
NBC has been one of the most important Olympic rights partners for the IOC in recent times, and this latest deal will also include: support for the in-venue distribution of live TV coverage from Olympic Broadcasting Services OBS); support for OBS in producing the Olympic Video Player; collaboration on US digital advertising opportunities; and adding to (NBCUniversal parent company) Comcast’s expertise across technology infrastructure, connectivity, and media, around the games. These aspects of the deal will begin this year.
Separately, Comcast has also been a sponsor of the Team USA Olympic program since 2017.
In terms of recent LA28 commercial activity, meanwhile, earlier in September, telecoms heavyweight T-Mobile acquired the telecoms sponsorship rights for the games.
Mid-July saw the games' organizing committee sign up ride-hailing car service Uber as a sponsor, an agreement that, much-like the Starbucks partner and other brand deals relating to the games, also included Team USA and NBCUniversal.
In August, LA28 also announced plans to sell naming rights for several venues being used for the event.
Under these plans, sponsors that already have a naming rights deal in place with venues being used for the quadrennial event (including Crypto.com Arena, BMO Stadium, and the Inuit Dome), will be allowed to retain those rights during the Games by signing on as a founding partner. However, if a deal is not reached, the venue will be renamed without a sponsor.
The offering will allow broadcasters to refer to the venues using their corporate sponsor names, giving brands a global platform.
The IOC’s ‘clean venue policy’ will still apply, meaning no advertising will be allowed within the field of play.
LA28 needs to raise around $7.1 billion to cover the budget of hosting the event.
