(Bloomberg) -- With the Olympics concluding this weekend in Paris, the countdown has begun for flag football to make its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028.
And the NFL can barely wait.
The league has been helping to build the sport for years as a way to get more people interested in football – and ultimately the NFL. That included investing in leagues for girls and overseas expansion. Now the NFL is betting the Olympics will take flag football to the next level while increasing the league’s international fanbase.
“There’s so much that the Olympics offer for growing football and flag football,” said Stephanie Kwok, who the NFL hired in May as its first head of flag football. The sport “is a significant way for the NFL to introduce international countries to football.”
Kwok, a former executive at FanDuel, has a mandate to keep growing flag football and predicts that the interest generated by the Olympics will help get a pro league for women off the ground. That’s a prospect NFL owners have already been talking about, according to people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be named commenting on private conversations.
Amid the growth in girls playing flag football, the NFL and USA Football, the sport’s governing body in America, are trying to make the game a sanctioned high school and collegiate sport. And there’s progress with about a dozen states and a few college conferences adopting flag football.
A women’s pro league is the “natural next step,” said Scott Hallenbeck, chief executive officer and executive director of USA Football. “It helps complete the ecosystem, and there’s enough interest from the business side.”
Viewers who tune into flag football, which started as a recreational activity for US soldiers during WWII, will see a pared down version of the game. Teams use five players – the NFL has 11 – and at 50 yards the field is half the size of the traditional game.
The NFL partnered with the International Federation of American Football on a program to boost the sport’s popularity that includes starting youth camps. The IFAF, which has 75 member countries spanning Panama to Japan, has been hosting world championships for tackle and flag football for two decades. Across the globe, an estimated 20 million people play flag football, according to the organization.
On the men’s side, there’s the tantalizing prospect of the NFL seeing its brightest stars lead the US flag football team to a gold medal. Call it an NFL Dream Team of sorts that would help international marketing. Top players have already expressed interest.
“If I can still move around then, I’m going to try to get out there and throw the football around maybe in LA,” Patrick Mahomes, who has quarterbacked the Kansas City Chiefs to the past two Super Bowls, said last year.
Tyreek Hill, one of the league’s best wide receivers, said on his podcast that “you know how amazing it would be to assemble a super team to play in the Olympics?”
But there are hurdles to NFL players becoming Olympians that include how it would impact contracts and insurance. The NFL Players Association said there haven’t been serious discussions about its union members playing at the 2028 Olympics. There’s still things that need to get worked out, the NFL’s Kwok said.
But it’s hard to imagine NFL players not playing for Team USA, given professional athletes already compete in lots of sports, including basketball and tennis.
For the NFL’s stars, the opportunity to participate in the Olympics can provide a lot more exposure, especially since in flag football their faces won’t be hidden by a helmet. The NFL has no shortage of superstars, but even its most popular players don’t amass the same following as other sports.
Odell Beckham Jr. has the most Instagram followers in the NFL with about 18 million. The NBA’s Lonzo Ball hasn’t played a game since January 2022, but has just as many followers. Juventus footballer Paul Pogba, who is the same age Beckham, has more than three times as many.
“This is more exclusive than participating in the Super Bowl,” said Adriene Bueno, an athlete and brand consultant. “Players who participate in the Olympics are going to be thrown into a global spotlight in a way that literally had not been done in the past because football has primarily been an American sport.”
The NFL is betting that’s going to change.
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