Long Beach must claim a larger share of the region’s burgeoning sports market, the mayor said during an address Friday to business leaders — and it is poised to do so.
Long Beach is home to new professional teams and has a long history of athletic success at the high school and collegiate levels. Soon, it will have worldwide attention as host to nearly a dozen events at the 2028 Olympic Games.
Speakers at the 3rd Annual State of Business address agreed the city’s new baseball and soccer teams, coupled with the international Games, will serve to gauge the excitement — or nonchalance — of having a professional sports team in the city.
Several cited statistics from a 2025 report by Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation that found the Greater Los Angeles market, propelled by a dozen professional sports teams, brings in about $12 billion regionally.
This equates to about 83,000 jobs — mostly hospitality and event planning — as well as $726 million in state and local taxes. It’s a fast growing market, previously valued at $11.7 billion in 2024, and $8.9 billion in 2023, according to the economic firm.
Researchers attribute growth to recent success of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the sale of the Los Angeles Lakers and the race to bring pro football back to the Southland with the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers. Annual events that include the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach were also factored in the study.
Long Beach can capitalize on its reputation for athletic achievement, such as its national champion Long Beach State men’s volleyball team, or the fact that Poly High sends more athletes to the NFL than any high school in the nation. Wilson High School athletes haven’t missed an Olympics since 1952.
New events are also set to make their U.S. debut in Long Beach, including KASSO, the cult Japanese skateboarding game show next year.
The city’s professional soccer team won a league championship last October, while its newly formed independent league baseball team held tryouts on Thursday. Blair Field, the home of the new team, is expected to enter into an agreement soon to allow for renovations.
Paul Freedman, the founding partner of the newly formed Long Beach Baseball Club, said the city already has a larger economy than half the league cities in Major League Baseball.
“We’re larger than a lot of cities like Anaheim and New Orleans and St. Louis, and with the size of Atlanta,” Freedman said. “We’re larger than many of these cities that have teams, (like) Cincinnati. We can handle a major league baseball team.”
Whether to know if a city is ready for a sports team depends a lot on who wears the local merch.
“Is it the tourists that rep the town or is it the locals who rep the town?” Freedman asked. “When you see a place where it’s the locals who rep the town, they have so much pride and ownership that they want to tell everybody they’re from Long Beach, you know that that’s a sports town.”
Arguably the greatest determinant will be the city’s handling of the 2028 Olympic Games.
The city is expected to host 11 Olympic events and seven Paralympic events, making it the largest host city outside Los Angeles.
John Harper, the chief operating officer with LA28, said the Games are “the biggest, most ambitious event in the world, the largest peacetime gathering.”
Organizers expect to sell 15 million tickets regionally, as 15,000 athletes from more than 200 countries compete in 51 disciplines across 30 days of competition. It will be like hosting “seven Super Bowls a day,” Harper said, for the first 16 days.
How cities use that air time — roughly 3,000 hours of live television — will make or break a long-term career in the sporting starlight.
Several speakers made the optimistic comparison to the 1984 Olympics, which are regarded as one of the most successful Games in modern history. The events ran smoothly and, with new forms of marketing and sponsorship, turned a rare profit of more than $222 million (about $700 million today).
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be the conventional disciplines, like baseball, soccer or football.
Jax Deiner, who owns Watch Me! Sports Bar, said she is in constant talks with the Professional Women’s Hockey League — which is partly owned by local tennis icon Billie Jean King — to bring a team to Long Beach. Long Beach has not had hockey since the Ice Dogs, which ceased play in 2007.
The beauty of the sports world, Freedman said, is that it’s not a zero-sum economy; the success of sports teams generally compounds based on the number of already existing franchises in a city.
“Once you see the success of a professional team in one sport, it starts to be a more attractive market for all the other sports,” Freedman said.