The results of the Olympic Games are typically measured in terms of medals and records. Their legacy, however, is built through stories.
What better place to host the Games than Los Angeles – a city that has built an industry on visual storytelling. In 2028, broadcast features, camera innovations, athlete backstories and viral social media clips will all contribute to the narrative that surrounds Olympic competition, influencing how billions of viewers interpret the Games and the place where they’re staged.
That tension framed “Game Day: Athletes, Media and the LA28 Stage,” one of several panel discussions hosted during The Games Week at USC (2-6 March, 2026), a series exploring how Los Angeles is preparing to host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The concept for the week-long series of events was developed by a group of students at USC Viterbi’s Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE), and this panel was produced in collaboration with USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. Moderated by Anthony Bottino, a current senior (and future sports anchor) at USC Annenberg, the panel featured Paralympian swimmer Jack O’Neil, Olympian swimmer and USC alumna Noelani Day B.S. ’25, and Seth Rubinroit, senior manager of audio and digital strategy at NBC Sports. Together, they envisioned how athletic performance, media production and digital platforms will influence the perception of the Games and Los Angeles in 2028.
The narrative impact of minutes and seconds
For athletes, the Olympics condense years of preparation into a single performance.
O’Neil competed in the 100-meter backstroke at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, arriving at the Games set back by injuries that limited his expectations for the race itself. Rather than focusing on the result, he approached the experience with a broader perspective.
L-4: Anthony Bottino, Jack O’Neil, Noelani Day
“I knew what I was capable of physically,” he said. “So my mindset was just to take in every part of the experience – because after that race, it’s over.”
The brevity of Olympic competition also shapes how broadcasters approach the Games. Rubinroit, who has covered eight Olympic and Paralympic Games with NBC, said producers are making constant decisions about which athletes and storylines will resonate most with viewers.
“You have so many stories you want to tell in so little time,” he said. “You’re trying to maximize that opportunity.”
Multiple pathways to the Olympic stage
Athletes arrive at the Games from dramatically different training environments.
Day, a USC alumna and Olympic swimmer who represented Tonga at the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, is now an LA28 Fellow, advising the organizing committee on how to support competing athletes.
She described the contrast between athletes raised within established sports systems and those from nations where facilities and coaching may be limited.
“For a lot of athletes from smaller nations, the starting line is very different,” she said. “If you grow up somewhere like the United States, you have access to pools and facilities. I grew up in a country without a swimming pool.”
Despite those disparities, athletes arrive at the same international stage. Day argued that understanding those varied journeys is important when considering what it means to compete at an Olympic level.
“To be an Olympian doesn’t always mean you’re a double NCAA champion,” she said. “Sometimes it means you’re the first athlete from your country to compete in that sport.” Now – another first – her goal is to become the first physical therapist in Tonga.
The medium is the message
L-4: Jack O’Neil, Noelani Day, Seth Rubinroit
Rubinroit pointed to broadcast innovations that have altered how viewers perceive athletic performance. The pace of change is increasing exponentially – we can’t yet predict how technology will shape the methods of storytelling in 2028.
A textbook example is the use of underwater cameras. Swimming coverage once relied primarily on overhead camera angles, which offered little insight into the athletes’ expressions or technique. Then, at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics, underwater tracking cameras were first used to produce footage of swimmers beneath the surface, revealing details of stroke mechanics and physical exertion.
“It’s a far better angle,” said Rubinroit. “You can witness the effort and the pain in a way you never could before.” From a measure of pure speed – the swimmer crossing one side of the pool to the other, seen from above – the act of swimming becomes a human story, one that is specific to the swimmer, their struggle and prowess.
Comparable shifts in broadcasting technology have occurred in other sports. Drone cameras now track alpine skiers down moun
tain courses, giving viewers a clearer sense of speed and risk than traditional static coverage allowed. Drama and spectacle is heightened, and the sport is sited in situ – in a landscape. At LA28, that landscape will be the cityscape of Los Angeles, seen from multiple angles.
Athletes telling their own stories
Of course, Olympic storytelling no longer flows exclusively through broadcast networks.
Athletes increasingly communicate directly with audiences through platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, sharing training routines, travel experiences and daily life beyond the confines of television coverage. “As an athlete, these platforms are an incredible opportunity to walk people through your life,” said O’Neil.
For competitors from countries with limited Olympic broadcasting rights, social channels can also expand access to the Games themselves. Day noted that growing up in Tonga she rarely saw Olympic coverage because of media restrictions. “Social media is how people back home are watching the events,” she said. That leads to a different interpretation of the competition – seen in rapid clips, competing against multiple other content streams, footage optimized for clickability and stories algorithmically selected for the viewer.
Los Angeles and the Olympic narrative
The event will mark the third time Los Angeles hosts the Olympics and the first time the city hosts the Paralympics. Venues such as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will again stage events, linking the upcoming Games to nearly a century of Olympic history in the city. At the same time, Los Angeles’ role as a global center of film, television and digital media will influence how those Games are experienced. New broadcast technologies, expanded digital platforms and athlete-driven storytelling are likely to play a larger role than ever before.
This infusion of the old and the new will make for a new way of framing how nations can come together in a shared pursuit of human excellence. After all, as Day noted during the discussion, the Olympics remain “the biggest peacetime gathering in the world.”
Published on March 23rd, 2026
Last updated on March 23rd, 2026