The city will become the third in the world to host the games three times as it adds to the storied years of 1932 and 1984. Here’s a look forward and back in time at the Olympics in LA.

LA’s Olympic trilogy

Los Angeles got the 2028 games as a consolation prize when Paris was picked for 2024.

Back in 1932, LA hosted its first Olympics. The city was the only bidder for the games at a time marred by the Great Depression and the absence of several nations. Yet memorable sport moments came from athletes including American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won golds in the new women’s events of javelin and hurdles.

Financial and cultural success gave 1984 a reputation as the “good” Olympics” which made seemingly every major world city want their own.

Emphasizing both the modern and the classical with a hand from Hollywood, the games opened with decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lighting the torch, a guy in a jetpack descending into the Memorial Coliseum and theme music by “Star Wars” maestro John Williams.

With Eastern Bloc countries boycotting, the U.S. dominated. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are among the athletes who became household names. A young Michael Jordan led the men’s basketball team to gold.

The games renewed, for a while, the global reputation of a city that had been perceived to be in decline.

“We want our games to be a modern games, youthful, full of the optimism that Southern California brings to the world and the globe,” Janet Evans, four-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and chief athlete officer for the LA 2028 organizing committee, told The Associated Press in Paris.

Passing the torch

Bass, who arrives back in LA Monday, spent these games in Paris along with organizers and city officials, learning what it takes to host the world’s largest sporting event.

Joining her were LA28 Chairperson Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive, and LA councilmember Traci Park, chair of the city Olympic committee.

“As we’ve seen here in Paris, the Olympics are an opportunity to make transformative change,” Bass said at a press conference ahead of the closing ceremony.

Venues old and new, plus a swimming stadium

Amid a stadium-and-arena boom, LA will polish existing structures rather than erect new ones.

“It’s a no-build games,” Evans said.

After Paris’ innovative opening ceremony on the Seine River, LA plans to open with a traditional, stadium-based approach at SoFi Stadium in neighboring Inglewood that also incorporates the century-old Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles itself.

Home to two NFL teams, SoFi has hosted a Super Bowl and several Taylor Swift concerts since opening in 2020. It will become what organizers say is the largest Olympic swimming venue ever. Its opening ceremony role means swimming will come after track and field for the first time since 1972.

Intuit Dome, the soon-to-open Inglewood home of the NBA’s Clippers, would be the games’ newest major venue and is the planned home for Olympic basketball. The Lakers’ downtown Crypto.com Arena will host gymnastics.

The toxicity of swimming in the Seine became a serious issue in Paris. That could put renewed focus on the Long Beach area waterfront when it hosts marathon swimming and triathlon races. Its cleanliness history is mixed but its ocean waters got consistently high marks in a 2023 analysis by nonprofit Heal the Bay.

The Long Beach shore was home to the pre-recorded performances during Sunday’s ceremony of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, though it was easy to mistake for LA’s Venice Beach, where the journey of the flag begun by Cruise was shown ending moments earlier.

Trains, buses and traffic

A city that’s notoriously hard to traverse may seem like an odd fit for the Olympics, but it can work.

Bass said she plans to emulate the tactics of Tom Bradley, the mayor in 1984, whose traffic mitigations had some saying it was better than at non-Olympic times. They include asking local businesses to stagger workforce hours to reduce the number of cars on the road and allow work from home during the 17-day games.

Landing the Olympics under then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017 gave the city an unusually long lead time for planning.

While it’s no Paris Metro, LA has built a subway since its last Olympics, with lines running past major venues.

In 2018, the city planned an ambitious slate of 28 bus and rail projects to transform public transit. Some were scrapped but others moved forward, including the extension of a subway line to connect downtown Los Angeles with UCLA, the planned home of the Olympic Village.

Another high-profile project is the Inglewood People Mover, an automated, three-stop rail line past major Olympic venues. It initially received a commitment of $1 billion in federal funding, but opposition from Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters led to a $200 million reduction, the Los Angeles Times reported. It’s unclear whether the line will be completed by 2028.

Metro recently received $900 million in funding through an infrastructure spending package and grants from the Biden administration, of which $139 million will go directly toward improving transportation by 2028 and the goal of a “car-free” Olympics.

“The biggest challenge is not waiting to 2028, but really taking the opportunity between now and 2028 to help Angelenos and visitors alike reimagine the transportation network as something that will be their first choice,” Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins said.

Crime, safety and perception

While crime rates were considerably higher in 1984 than today, the countdown to 2028 comes as the issue has gotten increased attention and cast a social-media-amplified shadow.

The Olympics are designated as a national special security event, which makes the U.S. Secret Service the lead agency tasked with developing a security plan, supported by significant federal resources.

LA city and county law enforcement sent officers to Paris to observe, learn and assist as they prepare for their own 2028 games.

There are many more encampments on city streets than there were in 1984, and it’s unlikely LA will have solved its homeless crisis in the next four years. As the Paris games ended, California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to withhold funding from cities unable to clear encampments.

Ahead of the Games in Paris, organizers relocated thousands of unhoused people, a practice also used for the 2016 Rio de Janiero games and criticized by activists as “social cleansing.”

Tourists and finances

LA is the “next logical destination” for the Olympics, said Adam Burke, president and CEO of the LA Tourism and Convention Board. “LA has emerged as really one of the world’s sports capitals.”

First though, the city will host a FIFA World Cup event and U.S. Women’s Open in 2026 and another Super Bowl in 2027.

The city’s hotel industry has continued to see growth, adding 9,000 new hotel rooms in the past four years with more to come over the next four.

LA28 organizers are banking on ticket sales, sponsorships, payments from the International Olympic Committee and other revenue streams to cover the games’ $6.9 billion budget. The committee has brought in just over $1 billion toward a goal of $2.5 billion in domestic corporate sponsorships.

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Associated Press Writer Noreen Nassir contributed from Paris.

While people have been making a living off of creating content for online audiences for nearly two decades, what was once a nascent industry is growing up. Brands are getting more strategic about influencer marketing, a thriving ecosystem has emerged to serve creators and their needs, and social platforms are increasingly nudging consumers to spend while they scroll.

What does this mean for influencers and their audiences? The Times asked those who have been in the creator economy for decades to opine on what the new year will bring. We’re still in the early innings, they said, but in 2024, the industry will continue to mature in significant ways.

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It will get tougher to build a ‘real’ business.

Most creators start off as one-man bands. They brainstorm, film, edit and post content on their own. Day by day, they grow their followings, and eventually begin to make money. But then what?

“There are two options: You either bring in a manager or agent externally, or you hire a COO or business partner internally,” said Jon Youshaei, a creator and founder of Youshaei Studios. “And more and more, I’m seeing creators bring in a right-hand person internally.”

A lot of this has to do with competition. Although the barrier to entry has never been lower, building a “real business” in the creator economy is getting harder, Youshaei said.

Blake Michael, chief strategy officer of Fourteen Media Group, a consulting firm for creator economy startups, said this necessitates bringing in outsiders to help with growth strategies.

“Niche verticals are so quickly becoming saturated, and that means you’ve got to put more effort into your content to stand out,” Michael said.

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Companies will be more selective about who they work with …

In the early days of influencer marketing, creators quickly attracted money and attention from companies clamoring to get in on social media. This year, businesses won’t be as willing to throw money at any influencer that comes their way.

“I just think they’re getting a lot smarter,” said Joe Gagliese, co-founder of Viral Nation, one of the world’s first influencer marketing agencies. “They want to understand: Does this person really align with my brand? What are their views and perspectives on things that might not align with my brand?”

As brands become more disciplined in their efforts in 2024, they will increasingly want to see results they can measure, Gagliese said.

Two influencers who may look the same on paper might produce completely different results. Companies are learning to look at metrics such as community engagement over number of followers, and they’re scrutinizing the type of relationships creators have with their audience.

“There’s creators who people look to and trust for their opinion, and then there’s creators who folks like to be entertained by,” Gagliese said, “and those two types of engagement are very different as it relates to being able to help a brand.”

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… But this could mean more opportunities for ‘micro influencers.’

Counterintuitively, the push to formalize channels of influencer marketing will mean more opportunities for creators with smaller followings.

Traditionally, several “inefficiencies” have slowed down the process when companies want to work with influencers, said Zach Ferraro, head of strategic partnerships at Fourthwall, a platform that helps creators sell products and launch memberships.

First, brands had to look for the right creator — and often they didn’t know exactly what they were looking for or what to expect realistically in terms of outcomes, Ferraro said. They had to go back and forth with a manager on rates, which can vary widely, and provide deliverables, such as a certain number of Instagram posts or videos.

To make it worth the friction and costs involved, brands would look only to ink larger deals.

But as companies have become more experienced, platforms that connect creators with brands have proliferated and the process has become more transparent. For example, the company F*** You Pay Me, allows creators to anonymously review brands they’ve worked with and share how much they got paid.

“Smaller, mid-tier micro influencers are going to get more opportunities as friction goes down,” Ferraro said.

Gagliese of Viral Nation agrees.

“I think that creators who have really developed core audiences and communities and have the ability to convert and create those business outcomes will likely get paid more,” he said. These are the influencers who might not have millions of followers but boast smaller, devoted audiences.

Another possibility is for brands to hire smaller creators for in-house content, Ferraro said. “Middle-class” creators who might not be doing as well financially as they want to be could find opportunities offering their expertise to brands looking to build their audiences.

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Consumers will pay you for your content too.

With the advent of in-app “tipping” features on social platforms, creators have another way to make money: Their fans can pay them directly without going through a third-party platform, such as Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee.

On TikTok, users can purchase coins to spend on virtual gifts for livestreamers on the platform that can then be converted into earnings. The most popular form of spending is a $19.99 bundle of coins that makes up a quarter of the app’s in-app purchase revenue (TikTok takes 50% of the payout).

Lexi Sydow, head of insights at data.ai, said this is a compelling trend because they represent one-off micro-transactions given in the moment for specific creators that consumers enjoy.

“There’s not necessarily a subscription tied to it,” Sydow said. “You’re saying, ‘Kudos. I like this. I want more of it.’ And I think that that’s powerful for this space because I really do believe we’re in the early days of the growth rates.”

In 2023, TikTok became the first non-game app to generate $10 billion in consumer spending, according to data.ai. This bodes well for social media spending overall, which is only projected to grow.

Other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube have also jumped on the bandwagon to introduce tipping features.

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Authenticity will rule…

Eric Wei, co-founder of Karat, a startup that helps creators with their finances and credit, describes the current era of social media content as “sensationalist” — and predicts a trend toward authenticity in 2024.

Just take a look at the top subscribed YouTube channel by an individual, MrBeast, whose recent videos include “I Rescued 100 Abandoned Dogs!” and “$1 vs $100,000,000 Car!”

Although MrBeast will continue to be popular, Wei predicts a movement of creators toward more unedited content. They include fitness YouTuber Sam Sulek, who has 2.75 million subscribers.

“Everyone’s focusing on Sam, why? The guy doesn’t edit,” Wei said. “It’s just him working out at the gym for over an hour.”

Youshaei, who also has a YouTube channel, said he sees the rise of this kind of content counteracting the “hyper-edited” videos that have taken over YouTube in recent years.

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… But the rise of fake influencers is coming.

Lil Miquela, self-described as a “19-year-old Robot living in LA,” is one of the first virtual influencers. She charges up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a deal and has worked with brands such as Burberry, Prada and Givenchy, the Financial Times reported recently.

She posts photos of herself vacationing in Europe, dyeing her hair at the salon and eating at taquerias. Does it matter that she’s not real? She has 2.6 million followers.

Human influencers may soon have to worry about competition from such AI-generated avatars.

Digital avatars that amass followers is not a new idea. Consider Japanese Vocaloid Hatsune Miku and K/DA, a virtual K-pop girl group featuring League of Legends characters.

And Wei points to Iron Mouse, one of the most subscribed female creators on Twitch who uses a virtual avatar and is known as a VTuber.

“It’s already a billion dollar industry,” he said.