Bob Iger floated as potential LA28 chair replacement for Casey Wasserman

UPDATE: According to TheWrap, Iger is “not interested in the gig” and has not been approached about it.

ORIGINAL: Per CNN, the outgoing Disney CEO — who hands the company to Josh D’Amaro on March 18 — has been floated in backchannel conversations between the US and International Olympic Committees as a potential replacement for Casey Wasserman as LA28 chair.

If you need a refresher on how we got here, we covered it earlier this month. The short version is that Wasserman’s name turned up in the Epstein document releases alongside explicit emails with Ghislaine Maxwell. In turn, the LA28 board brought in outside counsel, concluded that his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell “did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented,” and backed him. Wasserman said he “deeply” regretted his interactions with Maxwell and maintained he “never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”

He’s shown no interest in stepping down, and as of earlier this month, per CNN, that hadn’t changed.

But the board’s support doesn’t actually address the fact that the role of chair requires media appearances, sponsor engagements, and serving as the public face of these Games for the next two-plus years.

So it’s not hard to see why Iger’s name has come up here. He’s sat across from broadcasters and sponsors at a scale that very few people have, and he comes without any of the baggage that’s made Wasserman’s position so difficult to defend. According to Reuters, LA28 has already cleared over $2 billion in private sponsorship revenue, about 80 percent of its $2.5 billion goal, so whoever steps in isn’t walking into a disaster. The job at this point is mostly about being the face of something that already works, and that’s pretty much Iger’s entire career in a nutshell.

CNN also flagged a political wrinkle worth noting. Wasserman spent years cultivating a relationship with the Trump administration specifically to keep LA28 insulated from political interference, and some California Democrats — including state Rep. Mark Gonzalez — have privately worried that his departure could hand Trump an opening to influence who fills the vacancy. It’s not an unreasonable concern. It’s just also not a sustainable argument for keeping someone in a forward-facing role.

For a Games that can’t afford distraction this close to lighting the cauldron, even floating Iger’s name signals that stability — or at least the appearance of it — has become the priority.