Flag Football Set To Make Olympic Debut At Los Angeles 2028 Games

Flag football is set to make its debut on the international stage at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

The sport is similar to tackle football where players wear “flags” around their waistline — an invention patented by Arizona teacher Porter Wilson — and opponents snatch the flags off their opponents rather than tackling them.

Game of inclusion

Dillon Couvillon, with the Los Angeles Flag Football League, has noticed a growing interest in the sport. The Los Angeles-based adult league for queer players and their allies, part of the National Gay Flag Football League, currently has 185 active players on the fall roster and it’s the first year they have added a women’s team to their structure.

“We have a waitlist,” Couvillon said. “It's a very inclusive sport. We like to pride ourselves on not only being inclusive of gender and sexuality, but also of experience levels.” (Here's where you can join the waitlist.)

The sport has a “lower barrier to entry,” he said, compared to tackle football. It also “has a lower risk factor and a lower competitive nature, but still something that's an opportunity to build a community, have fun, connect, and compete with others.”

The United States will feature male and female Olympic teams, which Couvillon said is a reflection of the growing expansion of the sport among high school girls.

“We've worked with and had conversations with the L.A. Chargers on a couple of events that have been put on to increase this exposure and the sport and awareness to young female athletes,” he said.

First professional league

Brian Michael Cooper is president and chief operating officer of the American Flag Football League, a professional sports league set to launch in April of next year. Like Couvillon, he’s also noticed an uptick in interest in the sport among women and youth leagues.

The league is planning teams for Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas, and Nashville, he said, with teams that consist of 12 to 15 players who play an eight-week regular season from late April through June.

The league, he said, will be the nation’s first ever professional flag football league, a testament to its growing interest.

The National Football League, Cooper said, has been instrumental in expanding flag football at the youth level and for prep sports, expanding access to women’s high school teams.

And now with the sport set to be a part of the 2028 Olympics, it would be a “motivating factor” for athletes to compete on the national level.

Couvillon is confident some players from the Los Angeles Flag Football League will feature on the national level. He says he’s willing to bet on it.

“We are highly competitive, we feature a lot of former D1 athletes as well as former professional athletes,” he said.

Selection criteria for the national team

Eric Mayes is a managing director at USA Football which is responsible for selecting and leading the U.S. National teams.

The first step in building those teams will be trials, where athletes are invited to play after having been scouted across USA Football sanctioned events.

“They come to trials. They run through tests. They run through drills,” Mayes said. “They get on the field. They engage with each other. They engage with coaches. We use that to whittle the invited list down to 12 active rosters of men and women that travel across the world to compete.”

“We have about five years of a runway leading into the L.A. 2028 Olympics, and we have a number of competitions between now and then, starting with the World Championships next year.”