AI Summary
5 min readThe Man Who Sold LA on the Olympics—and What He Sees in the M&A Boom
Gene Sykes lives in two worlds that rarely overlap. By day he is a longtime Goldman Sachs partner and co-head of Global M&A, advising on some of the largest deals in history. By night—or rather, the other half of his time—he is chair of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee. He also ran the bid that brought the 2028 Summer Games to Los Angeles. Speaking live at the Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach, Sykes walked through how the Olympics actually get funded, why he thinks LA traffic won't be the nightmare everyone expects, and what the current M&A boom tells us about AI adoption.
What Makes a Successful Olympic Games—and Why LA Is Unusual
For Sykes, a successful Olympics has a simple definition: "Everyone says, 'I'll never forget this. This is an incredible experience, and I only saw it here.'" The scale is staggering. LA will sell 15 million tickets between the Olympic and Paralympic Games—more than double the 6.5 million sold for the 2026 World Cup across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. The Olympics encompass roughly "90% of everything you can imagine in the world of sports," Sykes said, with 206 countries sending teams.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (03:01) **Guest Introduction: The Two Hats of Gene Sykes** - Gene Sykes introduces himself as a Goldman Sachs partner (co-head of Global M&A) and president of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, explaining how he splits his time between dealmaking and the Olympic ecosystem.
- 2 (04:27) **What Makes a Successful Olympics?** - Sykes defines success as creating an unforgettable experience, and reveals a surprising demographic fact about Olympic viewership.
- 3 (05:45) **Scale and Stakeholders: Olympics vs. World Cup** - Sykes contrasts the massive complexity of the Olympics with the recent World Cup, highlighting the logistical sprawl.
- 4 (06:40) **Funding the Games: The “Privately Funded” Model** - Sykes clarifies the funding mix for LA 2028, explaining why it’s called privately funded and how existing infrastructure keeps costs down.
- 5 (08:09) **Addressing the Traffic Nightmare** - Sykes tackles the common fear of LA traffic and lines, arguing that advance planning and existing venue operations will make the experience smooth.
- 6 (10:17) **World Cup Lessons for the Olympics** - Sykes reflects on the 2024 World Cup’s successes and missteps, and how they inform Olympic planning.
- 7 (15:08) **Ticket Sales and Corporate Sponsorship** - Sykes explains the strong demand for LA 2028 tickets and the multi-layered sponsorship structure that funds the Games.
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Show Notes
We're in an era of megadeals, with Goldman Sachs reporting a record year for big deal volumes as companies scramble to compete with AI. Gene Sykes has seen multiple deal cycles come and go over his multi-decade career. The co-head of mergers and acquisitions has worked on famous transactions like Comcast's purchase of Universal and Disney's buyout of Pixar. In addition to being "the most-influential M&A banker you've never heard of," as New York magazine has put it, he has also spearheaded Los Angeles's successful bid to bring the Olympic Games to the city in 2028. In this conversation, recorded live at the Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, California, we discuss how a city pays for a big event like the Olympics, and parallels between the early 2000s TMT environment and now.
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