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- LA28 is selling Olympic venue naming rights for the first time in Games history
- Organisers were calling the arena the Inglewood Dome
- Intuit’s 23-year naming rights deal for Clippers’ arena worth around US$500m
Financial software provider Intuit has signed a sponsorship deal with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organising committee, ensuring the company retains naming rights to the Intuit Dome during the Games, according to Sportico.
The venue, which is home to the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Los Angeles Clippers, will stage the Olympic basketball tournaments. LA28 organisers have been referring to it as the ‘Inglewood Dome’ in adherence to the Olympic policy that non-sponsorship partners must obtain permission before using their branding for Olympic purposes.
Games organisers decided to rewrite the Olympic sponsorship playbook this year by allowing brands to buy naming rights to official competition venues for the first time in the history of the Games.
The landmark move was signed off by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), whose global TOP partners will have first right of refusal to purchase naming rights for up to 19 temporary Games venues.
Qualifying LA28 partners also have the option to keep existing venue names during the Games and buy additional marketing assets.
Two of LA28’s founding partners have already taken up the opportunity, with Comcast sponsoring the squash venue at Universal Studios and Anaheim’s Honda Center retaining its name of nearly two decades when it hosts volleyball events. It had already been announced that boxing will take place at Peacock Theater.
LA28 chairman and chief executive Casey Wasserman had previously indicated that permanent venues being used at the Games, including Intuit Dome, could retain their names for the Olympics if their sponsors buy the naming rights.
The decision enables LA28 to ‘unlock a new revenue stream’ and support its push towards ‘the largest commercial revenue raise in sports’, according to a statement in August from the organising committee, which has a sponsorship target of US$2.5 billion.
However, Wasserman told US reporters that revenue raised from naming rights sales would be in addition to the overall sponsorship goal.
It had been expected that if Intuit, or other existing sponsors of permanent venues, chose not to purchase Olympic naming rights, those venues would be given a sponsor-free name, as was the case with the Inglewood Dome. However, according to Sportico, Intuit’s deal prevents another sponsor from acquiring Olympic naming rights for the arena.
Financial details of the sponsorship have not been reported.
Outside of naming rights, the IOC’s clean venue policy will still apply, meaning there will still be no advertising within the field of play.
California-headquartered Intuit secured naming rights to the Clippers’ US$2 billion home, which opened in August 2024, in a deal announced in September 2021. The agreement is reportedly worth more than US$500 million over 23 years, making it the most lucrative naming rights deal in NBA history by total value.
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