Flag football is a better fit for the Olympics than it might seem
The barrier to entry is much lower than in traditional football
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The International Olympic Committee has officially added five sports to the program for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Flag football, cricket, lacrosse, squash and baseball/softball were proposed by the local organizing committee a week ago, then recommended by the IOC executive board on Friday before receiving the final seal of approval today from the full membership at a meeting in Mumbai, India.
Each of these new Olympic sports comes with its own backstory — starting with the fact that most of them are not actually new to the Olympics.
Cricket was played at the 1900 Games in Paris (where the "tournament" consisted of one match between a club from France and a club from Great Britain) before disappearing from the Olympics for more than a century, even as its global popularity soared. According to The Associated Press, the value of India's Olympic broadcasting rights could rise by more than $100 million US now that the favourite sport of the most populous country on Earth is on the program. The expectation for 2028 is that there will be six-team tournaments for men and women played under the Twenty20 (T20) format — the faster-paced, TV-friendly version of cricket that takes about 2½ hours to play.
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Lacrosse — Canada's national summer sport — appeared in the Olympics multiple times before being dropped from the program a long time ago. Canadian teams won gold in both 1904 and 1908 before lacrosse appeared as a non-medal demonstration sport in 1928, '32 and '48. In Los Angeles, lacrosse will follow suit with cricket by introducing a more compact version of the sport, called "sixes." A mixture of field (the genre previously used at the Olympics) and box lacrosse (the indoor version that's popular in North America), sixes is played on a smaller field with teams made up of a goalie and five other players and uses a 30-second shot clock.
Baseball/softball (the former for men, the latter for women) continues to get yanked around. It was on the Olympic program from 1992-2008, then disappeared for the next two Summer Games before Tokyo brought it back in 2021. Paris 2024 organizers sent it packing again, but baseball/softball is a natural fit for Los Angeles. Two big-league teams (the Dodgers and the Angels) play in the baseball-loving area, while UCLA is an NCAA women's softball powerhouse.
Squash will finally make its Olympic debut after years of lobbying to get in. There will be two events in L.A. — singles for men and women.
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Which brings us to flag football. This is probably the most surprising addition to the Olympics, just because American football is, well, extremely American. Virtually all of the world's elite players are from the United States, and Canada is the only other country with a quality professional league.
Traditional football is a non-starter as an Olympic sport for other reasons too. The complicated strategy and frightening degree of physical danger create a high barrier to entry, so it would take a lot for the rest of the world to catch up. Even if a competitive tournament were possible, the punishing physicality of the sport makes it difficult to play more than once a week, so it would be tough to cram into your typical 20-or-so-day Olympic window. Plus, at a time when the Olympics are prioritizing gender equality, high-level football is played almost exclusively by men.
But flag football is different. There's no tackling, so it's safer for people of all ages, sizes and shapes to play. Minimal equipment is required, and Olympic games will be played with five players per side on fields much smaller than the standard 100-yard American gridiron. There's no blocking, just a quarterback throwing to their receivers while the defence tries to stop them, which means no brain-twisting schemes to learn. And many more women play flag football than the traditional game.
In order to help persuade L.A. organizers and the IOC about the viability of flag football as an Olympic sport, a sort of test run was conducted at the 2022 World Games — an international, multi-sport event for sports that are mostly not in the Olympics. Both a men's and a women's flag football tournament were held in Birmingham, Alabama — eight teams in each, representing 10 different countries. While the U.S. won gold as expected in the men's event, the American women got trounced in their final by Mexico.
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Flag football also had a very powerful ally in the NFL, which worked with the International Federation of American Football (the sport's world governing body) on organizing the World Games tournaments and pitching the sport to L.A. organizers and the IOC.
Last year, high-ranking NFL executive Troy Vincent, a former All-Pro cornerback, wrote an op-ed for the league's website in which he argued for flag's inclusion in the Olympics and called it "the future of football." Citing statistics showing more than 2 million kids in the U.S. play organized flag and that "closer to 20 million" people in "more than 100 countries" participate globally, Vincent predicted "flag will dominate in neighbourhoods, schools and recreational leagues around the world" even as tackle will remain in the NFL and its youth and collegiate pipelines. The league has even appointed "global flag football ambassadors" including retired two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning and 2022 NFL MVP finalist Jalen Hurts.
In the end, it worked. The world's richest sports league got what it wanted (a line on millions of potential new international customers), and so did those behind the lobbying efforts for cricket, lacrosse, squash and baseball/softball. But, as the latter can attest, the Olympics can be fickle. Any of these sports could be a one-and-done like breakdancing, which will make its Olympic debut next year in Paris but was dropped by Los Angeles. Read more about the five new Olympic sports for 2028 here.
