Article Point: Why LA 2028 will be the first truly digital Olympic Games

Andrew Keen Contributor

Andrew Keen is the author of three books: Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo and The Internet Is Not The Answer. He produces Futurecast, and is the host of Keen On.

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Casey Wasserman, the founder and chief executive of the Los Angeles based talent agency Wasserman Media Group was tasked by LA Mayor Eric Garcetti to lead the successful bid for the 2028 Olympics.

In a recent interview at the Futurecast event at Warner Bros Studios in Hollywood Wasserman elaborated on how technology is changing the Olympics and the benchmark that the 2028 games will set for future generations.

In 2028 Wasserman predicts many of today’s nascent digital technologies — from augmented reality to artificial intelligence to self-driving cars to fully functioning smart cities — might already have become realities. Wasserman – a significant angel investor in tech and entertainment startups – predicts that digital technology will be central to the LA 2028 games.

Augmented reality, he tells me, with its ability to replicate the physical experience of the Olympics to billions of people around the world, offers “a meaningfully significant opportunity”. This revolutionary technology, he believes, will make the experience “so much better” – both for those inside and outside the stadiums. It will empower what Hollywood has always been best at: “the telling of stories”.

Silicon Valley can help in the preparation for the Games, Wasserman said. Sidestepping the standard Northern versus Southern Californian cliches, Wasserman presents the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics as a united Californian story – of both cutting edge Silicon Valley technology and Hollywood entertainment. “That’s what California is all about,” he says of this marriage. LA 2028 promises to be quite a wedding.

Many thanks to the folks at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce for their help in the production of this interview.

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