Welcome back to the Sunstone Way!
We – that’s much of the Sunstone Cities and Sunstone Advisors teams, including me – have participated in a number of conferences over the last few weeks, from the New York City Climate Week to the California League of Cities Annual Conference to Long Beach Tech Week. One thing that has struck me is how often the 2028 Summer Olympic Games has been the topic of discussion.
There has been plenty of excitement about watching the world’s best athletes compete in our Southern California back yard, of course. The Games are called LA28, and there are venues for sports spread out in Los Angeles County and surrounding SoCal counties.
Long Beach will be the home of 11 Olympic sports and seven Paralympic competitions (at last count), including marque events Beach Volleyball, Water Polo and Rowing. The historic Los Angeles Coliseum will host opening and closing ceremonies for the third time, along with the track and field events that remain the core of the Olympics. Orange County is home to the surfing competition, and Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium will become the largest-ever Olympics swimming venue, according to the LA28 organizers.
And that’s just a taste.
All About Business
It probably comes as no surprise that most of the conversation I heard or was a part of centered on the potential business opportunities the Olympics will bring to Southern California.
At the League of California Cities Annual Conference, which took place late last month in Anaheim, our friend Dustin MacDonald presented an entire session on the statewide impact the Olympics is expected to bring. Dustin is the regional business development specialist at the Governor’s Office for Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz).
It is speculated that our region could see 12-15 million Olympic spectators from July 14 to 30, 2028, along with 11,200 athletes, according to a Spectrum News report. The Paralympics in August will bring nearly 3 million more for another 12 days.
And Go-Biz is one of several agencies already geared up to help businesses to get involved in serving all those people directly and indirectly.
Working Together
GO-Biz’s approach is the Regional Alliance Marketplace for Procurement (RAMP). It provides a listing of open bid opportunities available to businesses seeking to provide goods and services for the Games. It even has a dedicated site already up and running – rampla.org.
Long Beach Accelerator CEO Vivian Shimoyama is a member of the city’s Community Advisory Group for the Olympics, and her emphasis is on small businesses, workforce and economic inclusion. The LB Accelerator has already hosted one workshop on becoming an Olympics business partner, and last week’s Long Beach Tech Week – presented by the LB Accelerator – had a well-attended session about the Olympics as well.
Keep an eye out for opportunities to be part of the many infrastructure projects under way now or starting soon with the Olympics summer in mind. There are transportation projects as well as work on and around the venues for the various sports.
Preparing for Success
We are still a year and nine months away from the 2028 Summer Olympic Games – the opening ceremony will be on July 14, 2028. But it feels like a sense of urgency for preparations has already kicked in.
That’s a good thing, at least in my mind. One of our keys to success at Sunstone is understanding that it takes work to be prepared to succeed – to put procedures and policies in place, to do the research necessary to understand the situation.
That’s also why we believe programs like the LB Accelerator and the CSULB Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship are so important. They help business owners prepare for success.
Working together will make the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics great successes for those involved, and for those working to make them happen. That is the Sunstone Way!
Remember, always be a Sunstone.
John Keisler
CEO & Managing Partner
Sunstone
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Sunstone Investment Group, headquartered in Southern California, is the holding company for the Sunstone family of entities, including: Sunstone Investment Management Services, responsible for administrative services; Sunstone Advisors, an SEC-registered investment adviser, which oversees Sunstone Venture Partners LLC, a private capital fund manager; Sunstone Cities, a government economic development consulting firm; and Sunstone Community Fund, a charitable organization that supports entrepreneurship. Sunstone is dedicated to enriching lives through investment, entrepreneurship, and community.
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