Forty-four years after equestrian events were held at what is now the Fairbanks Ranch Country Club golf course, the Olympics will return to San Diego as part of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, with soccer matches at Mission Valley’s Snapdragon Stadium.
LA28’s announcement regarding the venues for the group stage and knockout rounds of the men’s and women’s tournaments was published in an emailed statement at 4:00 am on Tuesday morning and was followed by a press conference at noon at the stadium.
“This is a pivotal moment for our city and for all who believe in the unifying power of sports,” said Mayor Todd Gloria at the Snapdragon event. “San Diego is ready for the world stage. We are a sports city, a soccer city and, without a doubt, a global city.”
No specific details were revealed, neither which games nor which genre, only that stadiums in six cities were added to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, which will host both finals: San Diego, San Jose, St. Louis, Nashville, New York and Columbus, Ohio.
The distribution of matches by venue is expected to be announced in April, when the first tickets go on sale, although the tournament draw will not take place until a few months before the competition.
The ideal matches for Snapdragon would be the women’s semi-finals, since the women’s tournament, which involves full national teams, is considered more prestigious in the Olympic Games than the men’s tournament, which is an under-23 tournament, unless each team can include three over-age players.
There is a chance this could happen, as organizers indicated the plan is for teams to start in the east with the group stage and progressively move west to minimize travel. PayPal Park in San Jose seats just 18,000, presumably making the 35,000-capacity Snapdragon Stadium the most viable venue for the high-level women’s semifinals.
The downside to the semi-finals is that it would likely mean fewer foreign visitors pumping money into the local economy compared to the group stage, as fans won’t know if their team advances that far until a few days before.
“We’ll get what we get, and it’ll be great,” said SDSU athletic director John David Wicker, who served as logistics manager at the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium during the 1996 Olympic football tournament. “I think it’ll be later in the tournament, obviously, since we’re so close to Los Angeles. But I don’t want to speculate on what exactly it will be.”
In 2028, the women’s tournament will expand to 16 teams, while the men’s will be reduced to 12, as part of a drive to achieve gender equality among the 15,000 athletes at the 2028 Summer Games.
The 2024 Olympics used a similar format: the finals and bronze medal matches in Paris, and everything else at six other venues spread across France.
Initially, there was speculation that the 2028 group stage and knockout rounds would be restricted to the West Coast to keep athletes in the same time zone as the Los Angeles Games. Tuesday’s announcement extended the tournament 4,000 kilometers east.
“Bringing the group stage and knockout matches of Olympic soccer to stadiums across the United States means more fans will witness this global event and experience the Olympic spirit firsthand,” Shana Ferguson, LA28 Director of Sports and Games Delivery, was quoted in the press release.
However, this comes at the expense of the athletes’ own full Olympic experience. Part of the fun is attending the Opening Ceremony, living in the Olympic Village, eating in the dining room with fencers and rowers, attending other events after yours is over, and enjoying the atmosphere of the host city with the family.
The six additional venues are Major League Soccer (MLS) stadiums. They are all relatively new or, in the case of New York, still under construction. Snapdragon Stadium, which also hosts the NWSL’s San Diego Wave, opened in August 2022.
“I guess they saw the same thing we saw,” said Tom Penn, CEO of MLS expansion franchise San Diego FC. “When we evaluated this market from afar, we saw that something special is happening with soccer and this community.”
“We went through a very diligent process to define our brand and define how we could authentically become the San Diego team, and all the research we did came to one statement: soccer thrives in San Diego.”
Due to potential sponsorship conflicts, stadiums will be identified by their location during the Olympic Games. For example, San Jose Stadium instead of PayPal Park and San Diego Stadium instead of Snapdragon Stadium.
It’s a back-to-the-future moment for Mission Valley. The former football stadium, opened in 1967, was originally called San Diego Stadium. In 1981, it was renamed Jack Murphy Stadium in honor of the local sportswriter who pushed for its construction; then, in 1997, Qualcomm Stadium; and, subsequently, SDCCU Stadium from 2017 until its demolition in 2020.
FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, and the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee will take over the site several weeks early, covering existing sponsorship signage (including Snapdragon Stadium banners) and replacing it with Olympic-themed decor.
Wicker said all sponsorship contracts included clauses allowing brands to be covered if the stadium hosted major events such as the Olympics or the World Cup.
Normally, having several weeks without events would be difficult in the summer. But MLS will switch to the international calendar in 2027 and the Olympic Games from July 14 to 28 would be held at the start of the 2028-29 season. The NWSL is expected to take a break mid-season as dozens of players will be on Olympic rosters.
Registration for the initial Olympic ticket lottery It is open from now until March 18 . The first ticket drawing is scheduled for April, although there is some uncertainty about whether it will include events outside of Los Angeles.
“From day one, we said we wanted to build a stadium for the entire San Diego community,” SDSU’s Wicker said. “We wanted every event possible. … We built this building to host not only local events, but international events, concerts, dirt shows, all the events so that our community would have a place to come together and celebrate what we are, who we are, and also for the whole world to come and celebrate us.”
Origina story:
San Diego will host Olympic soccer matches in 2028
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