THE IN Governance Series – Episode 4
LA28 may be remembered not simply for having one of the largest Olympic programmes ever assembled, but for demonstrating why the Games of the future will no longer need to look like the Games that came before them.
Los Angeles 2028 will stage an extraordinary Olympic programme. By the time the Games open, 36 sports will sit inside an edition shaped by the return of baseball/softball, cricket and lacrosse, the Olympic debut of flag football and squash, and the continued presence of disciplines that only a generation ago would have appeared far removed from the traditional Olympic model.
It would be easy to read that expansion as the direction of travel: more sports, more events, a larger Olympic programme.
That may be precisely the wrong conclusion.
LA28 is better understood as the culmination of one phase in the evolution of the Olympic programme and, at the same time, the bridge towards another. The programme of Brisbane 2032 is unlikely simply to inherit Los Angeles and add another layer on top. Under the reforms approved by the IOC Session in Lausanne in June, the architecture of the programme itself is becoming more flexible. The important question is therefore no longer how many sports can be added to the Olympic Games. It is how the IOC can build the most relevant programme for each edition of them.
That distinction changes almost everything.
Los Angeles offers perhaps the clearest illustration of why flexibility has become necessary. Its five additional sports were not incorporated into the Olympic programme as permanent commitments for future hosts. Baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash were proposed by LA28 and approved by the IOC specifically for the Los Angeles edition. IOC Newsroom
The logic is powerful. Los Angeles has an enormous sports market, an exceptional inventory of existing venues and a commercial environment unlike almost any other Olympic host. The Games can make use of that reality rather than forcing the city into a programme designed somewhere else and inherited from previous editions. LA28 itself is being delivered around the idea of using existing infrastructure rather than constructing permanent venues simply because the Olympic programme requires them. Olympic Library
Cricket offers another dimension. Its return brings the Olympic Games closer to one of the largest sporting audiences in the world. Flag football connects directly with the American sporting market. Baseball has an obvious relationship with the host country. Lacrosse has deep North American roots. Squash brings a genuinely international competitive footprint while finally entering the Olympic stage.
These are different reasons for inclusion, and that is precisely the point.
The Olympic programme is beginning to acquire the ability to respond simultaneously to global relevance, host-country culture, youth engagement, available infrastructure, commercial opportunity and the broader strategic objectives of the Olympic Movement.
Under the old way of looking at the Games, the programme was largely perceived as a list of Olympic sports to which a host could propose additions. Under the emerging model, it is more useful to think of it as an architecture assembled for a particular edition.
That is where Brisbane becomes much more interesting than Los Angeles.
Brisbane does not have to reproduce LA28. Nor does Australia need to provide the same sporting proposition as the United States. The IOC’s wider reforms point towards Games that adapt more closely to the circumstances of their hosts, while the organisation’s long-term venue policy has already moved decisively in that direction: the Games should make use of what a city or region needs and already possesses rather than obliging the host to build infrastructure simply to satisfy an inherited Olympic template. Olympic Library
The same philosophy is now beginning to influence the programme itself.
Brisbane 2032 has said that it is consulting with the IOC, the IPC and the International Federations on the development of its sports programme, including the assessment of potential additional sports. Cloudinary The final shape has not been determined. That uncertainty should not be interpreted as hesitation. Increasingly, it is part of the design.
A future Olympic programme can contain a stable foundation without requiring every component of the previous Games to travel automatically to the next host. Around that foundation, additional sports can reflect the characteristics and ambitions of a particular edition. Within sports, disciplines and events can increasingly be assessed on their own merits. New formats can emerge where they bring younger audiences or improve the presentation of the Games. And a host can influence the programme where there is a compelling local sporting culture, venue infrastructure or strategic opportunity.
This is why the number 26 deserves attention — but also caution.
THE IN’s working projection is that Brisbane could ultimately settle around a more concentrated base of approximately 26 sports before the final architecture is completed through disciplines and host-related additions. That is not an announced IOC target, nor should it be reported as one. It is a strategic projection of what the new methodology makes possible.
And, crucially, a smaller base would not necessarily mean a smaller Olympic Games.
That is one of the most easily misunderstood consequences of the reform.
Once disciplines become a more meaningful unit of programme evaluation, counting International Federations or even counting “sports” tells us progressively less about the real scale of the Games. A programme can become more selective at sport level while remaining broad — or even becoming broader — in the number of disciplines, events, athlete pathways and audiences it incorporates.
The arithmetic of the Olympics is changing because the unit being counted is changing.
That has significant consequences for the International Federations.
For decades, Olympic status created a powerful degree of institutional continuity. Once a sport occupied a place within the Games, the central strategic task of its federation was largely to protect that position and negotiate the details around events, quotas and competition formats.
The emerging environment is more dynamic. Federations will increasingly need to demonstrate not simply the value of their sport in the abstract, but the relevance and adaptability of the disciplines they can offer to a particular Olympic edition.
That need not be seen as a threat. For many federations it could become an opportunity.
A federation with several disciplines may no longer face an all-or-nothing Olympic proposition. One discipline may fit the infrastructure, audience and strategic priorities of a particular host better than another. A compact discipline with limited venue requirements may offer advantages that a larger format cannot. A new format may provide a route into the programme without requiring the Games to absorb the entire traditional competition structure of a sport.
In other words, flexibility works in both directions. It gives the IOC greater room to construct the Games, but it also gives federations more ways to demonstrate how they can contribute to them.
We can already see part of that thinking beyond the competition programme itself. The IOC’s expanded Olympic Q-Series for LA28 will bring together disciplines including 3×3 basketball, beach volleyball, BMX freestyle, climbing, flag football and skateboarding across Tokyo, Shanghai, Montreal and Orlando. IOC Newsroom These are very different sports and disciplines, but they share characteristics valuable to a modern Olympic product: compact presentation, strong visual identity, accessibility to audiences and the ability to operate in an event environment beyond the conventional single-sport qualification model.
It is another indication that Olympic architecture is becoming less dependent on the boundaries between federations and more capable of organising sport around the needs of the Games themselves.
This also explains why LA28’s 36-sport programme should not become the benchmark against which Brisbane is judged.
Los Angeles is Los Angeles. Its programme reflects its market, its infrastructure, its sporting culture and the particular opportunities of 2028. Brisbane will have different assets, different constraints and different strategic possibilities. A future host in Europe, Asia or Africa would have others again.
That is the deeper logic behind flexibility.
For much of Olympic history, cities adapted themselves to the Games. Increasingly, the Games are being designed to adapt themselves to their hosts. The programme is becoming part of that transformation.
The significance of Brisbane 2032 may therefore lie not in whether it ultimately contains 26, 28, 30 or 36 sports. Those numbers will matter enormously to the federations involved, but institutionally they are secondary to the larger change.
For the first time, we may be approaching an Olympic cycle in which the programme of one Summer Games is no longer assumed to be the starting programme of the next.
Los Angeles can be large because Los Angeles can support it. Brisbane can be different because Brisbane should be allowed to be different. Future hosts may be different again.
This is not the disappearance of an Olympic programme.
It is the emergence of an Olympic programme that can move.
And that may prove to be one of the most consequential changes in the way the Games are built.
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