American football’s elite National Football League (NFL) has voted to allow its players to participate in flag football's debut at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games (LA28).
Agreed at the league’s May 20 owners meeting, each NFL team will be allowed to send one US player each, as well as an additional international player each if the athlete is designated as such.
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Six men’s and six women’s national teams will compete in flag football at the games, with the odds now skewed even further in favor of the US given its overwhelming dominance of the NFL nationality-wise, and the massive advantage its professional players have, against the largely amateur representatives of the world’s other nations.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stated on the announcement: “I think this news represents a great opportunity for the sport, for the NFL.
"It's truly the next step in making NFL football and football a global sport for men and women of all ages and all opportunities across the globe. We think that's the right thing to do, and this is a big step in accomplishing that."
The NFL's internationalization goals have long been clear, and Olympic coverage may further interest in new global markets.
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By GlobalDataIn the past, the league has staged flag football exhibition games in isolation, most prominently at the annual Pro Bowl all-star event, but has never put forward its players for the discipline competitively.
The decision was supported by the president of the International Federation of American Football, Pierre Trochet, who added: IFAF’s 75 national federations join me in thanking our NFL partners for this further demonstration of their commitment to flag football in the Olympic movement. We will work together to ensure our sport contributes a defining element of LA28’s success.”
One major beneficiary of this announcement will be US media giant NBCUniversal, which is the long-term US media rights holder for the Olympic Games, and will broadcast the entirety of LA28 in the country.
The NFL in itself is perhaps the biggest ratings draw in the US annually, and NBCU distributes coverage from the league on its NBC Media channel with its Sunday night “game of the week” broadcasts, and via its Peacock streaming service.
In terms of sporting events, however, the quadrennial Olympics reaches even more than the NFL still, with NBCU claiming that its coverage of the Paris 2024 games, despite adverse time zone scheduling, reached – on average – 67 million total viewers per day, with fans streaming 23.5 billion minutes of NBCU coverage, predominantly via Peacock.
In combining its two biggest sports rights via the flag football event, NBC can count on crossover interest from both fan segments and will look to garner major viewership on that, added to the supercharged viewership element that a home Olympic Games brings.
NBCU has broadcast 13 Olympic Games consecutively, 19 in total (beginning with Tokyo 1964).
