Attracting US Olympic Swim Trials back to Indy meant moving another convention, officials say

A pair of warm-up pools were built on the northern portion of Lucas Oil Stadium ahead of the USA Olympic Swim Trials at Lucas Oil Stadium. (IBJ photo/Mickey Shuey)

Local sports tourism officials on Tuesday formally announced the return of the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials to Indianapolis, but getting the event back at Lucas Oil Stadium in June 2028 wasn’t without its challenges.

In particular, officials with Visit Indy and the Capital Improvement Board, which manages the stadium, had to convince a faith-based group to vacate its dates for the second week of June in order to free up space at the Indiana Convention Center and create a massive block of rooms across several downtown hotels.

No specific dates have been finalized for the swimming event, but sources last week told IBJ that the trials are expected to begin sometime in the second week of June and run for nine days. The event will determine who will compete on the men’s and women’s U.S. Olympic swimming teams during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles later that summer.

Indianapolis-based insurance firm OneAmerica Financial Partners Inc. is set to return as the trials’ primary sponsor.

Over a span of three months, tourism executives worked closely with the faith-based group, which they declined to identify, to find another date in the 2030s when Indianapolis could host its convention. The group was expected to draw about 18,000 people, generate $20 million in spending, and would have used the entirety of the existing convention center and several thousand hotel rooms.

“We were incredibly transparent with this convention that was [already] on the books that the event we were eyeing was USA Swimming,” Chris Gahl, executive vice president of Visit Indy, told IBJ.

When Lucas Oil Stadium hosted the 2024 Swim Trials last June, it drew record crowds and marked the first time a professional football stadium has hosted a swim meet.

The nine-day sports event set attendance records, including 20,689 spectators for the event’s opening night—the most ever for a swim meet—only to have the record broken eight days later at the finals, which drew a crowd of 22,209. The previous modern record was set during the 2016 Olympics in Rio, which drew about 16,000 spectators.

Overall, the 2024 Swim Trials recorded 285,000 spectators across all its sessions, a 60% increase from the previous record set during its 2016 event in Omaha, Nebraska. It also drew record attendance at its fan event, the AquaZone, at the Indiana Convention Center.

The overall event generated more than $132 million in economic impact for the city, according to Indiana Sports Corp. and USA Swimming, and live primetime coverage of the event on NBC was up 20% over the previous trials.

“We know that this existing convention was widely aware of the event and even had members of their team that had actually taken in the USA Swimming event in 2024 as fans,” Gahl said. “So, this was not a new event on their radar, rather something they were very aware of and kind of proud of being part of Indianapolis’ quest to host.”

Gahl said Indianapolis has hosted the religious event here three times prior since 2004, but added Visit Indy is choosing not to identify the group until all paperwork and a new convention date have been finalized.

Patrick Talty is president of the Indiana Sports Corp., which led the city’s bid to retain the trials after hosting the event in 2024. He said the organization worked closely with Visit Indy and the CIB to ensure the event could get on the calendar.

“Every event is hard to land, and we had to work really hard … to clear the building to get the dates … so that we could actually host this,” he said. “I can’t say enough about what Visit Indy did, as they saw the importance of the trials to the city and the community, and they dived in and helped us figure out how to make this happen. That’s what Indy does, it comes together better than anyone else to land these big events.”

Aside from building-availability challenges, the effort to bring the event back to Indianapolis also had to navigate the ongoing leadership vacancy at USA Swimming itself, as the national governing body hasn’t yet named a new CEO after the departure of Tim Hinchey III last August.

Bob Vincent, interim CEO of USA Swimming, said the organization looked at “quite a few” cities to host the trials, it ultimately made sense to return to Indianapolis.

“USA Swimming is a big ship and we’ve got to keep moving forward, so we do just that,” he said. “We have an amazing staff and they have worked hand in hand with the Indiana Sports Corp. to get us where we are today. So I have a lot of confidence that we are at the right place at the right time and we’re ready to go.”

The plan for Lucas Oil Stadium to once again host the event comes as another NFL facility, So-Fi Stadium in Inglewood, California, is preparing to host swimming during the 2028 Summer Olympics. The venue decisions were made independent from one another. In fact, sources have said the Olympics decision was made prior to Indianapolis being picked for the 2024 trials.