Perspective: With Cricket & Basketball Tussling To Grab The Spotlight In The 2028 Olympics, Can The NFL’s Dream Of Making Football A Truly Global Phenomenon Come True?

A lot of interesting news has surfaced from the vast sea of sports. The Olympics are set to take over the world in 2024 as Paris hosts the mega event in late July. But what after that? Well, the USA will be hosting the Olympics 2028 in the city of Los Angeles. The Olympics Sports Director Niccolo Cmapriani recently came out with some news that might just put a smile on football fans’ faces. LA28 will see the inclusion of sports like Cricket, Squash, Lacrosse, Softball, and drum roll….Flag Football! However, it comes with a twist.

Sports like Basketball and Soccer have been on the Olympics’ list of sports for ages. Even Cricket is added to the list after more than a century, considering the international following that the sport has. Did you know that the Cricketer Virat Kohli has more followers than LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods combined? Massive numbers, aren’t they? So, what has stopped the NFL from joining the Olympic ranks? Well, as it stands, American Football has just been recognized as an Olympic sport and will be a part of LA28.

The NFL has always planned expansion outside of the USA and they finally have an opportunity. A couple of NFL regular season games have already been played in London so far and it is just a start because the NFL doesn’t want to miss its fair share of attention. This might be an opportunity of a lifetime as Football is returning to the Olympics for the first time since 1932.

Olympic Flag Football: NFL’s new frontier

According to the latest developments, the sport of Gridiron football is officially a part of LA28. But here is the twist, instead of regular football, the athletes will be competing in a game of ‘Flag Football”, which comes with its own set of rules and regulations. What differentiates Flag Football from Gridiron is the absence of tackles from the former. There are other nuances to flag football, such as no flexibility for the quarterback. Also, the concept of fumbles doesn’t exist in Flag Football, the ball just stays with the offense, and the game resumes from where the ball carrier’s feet fumbled. Though the rules come with minor changes, the effort to get the sport to the Olympics is major and this inclusivity comes at a cost.

Pros and cons of inclusion

These rules and measures have been introduced to protect the players from any unwanted injuries as they might also be competing in the NFL at the same time. Although the addition of Flag Football is official, the prospect of compensating the players is still in the pipeline. There are low chances that a player might get injured during the game as the game isn’t tackle-heavy. The players just need to pull a tag/flag from the players in possession. All the rules and regulations can be perused on the NFL Flag website. But coming back to the matter, to figure out the compensation, the government, the NFL, and the Olympics have to work out a deal to keep everyone happy. But what if everything is A-Okay but the team owners still don’t want to sponsor their players to go to the Olympics?

At this point though, there seems to be no incentive for the team owners to put their top players at risk. Though this is a high-risk high-reward situation, it still comes down to injuries and compensations. There have been career-derailing injuries in the past where the injured players were not compensated. The NFL pays a handsome salary to its athletes and some of them might not want to sideline a stable paycheck. Another hot take is to include former NFL players in conjunction with the current ones. This might be an answer to the problems regarding players being injured and compensating them at the same time. Why? Because the monetary transactions pertaining to the retired players will be lesser than those of players who are active in the league.

The twists and turns

Recently, NFL executive Peter O’Reilly mentioned that the NFL will work with the players’ union to figure out a prospect of current and former players participating in LA28. However, this is a tricky situation as well because currently there are more than 100 players belonging to a foreign nationality that compete in the NFL. Of course, they will want to represent their individual nations in the Olympics.

Among all the players in the league, Tyreek Hill seems to be very invested in LA28. He mentions his desire to ‘bring one home’ and mentioned in his podcast “You know how amazing it would be to assemble a super team to play in the Olympics,” sometime earlier.

The NFL has been on top of pitching and promoting flag football to bigger avenues. Last year the league held a series of matches where the AFC Vs. NFC stars were going at it in multiple games of Flag Football. Despite all the planning, there is still a lot of time left to execute these plans and it’s safe to say that till 2028, these nascent plans will turn into something concrete with working logistics. Till then, the NFL might have to study what the NBA did to garner a huge international presence.

NFL still has some obstacles ahead

Compared to the NFL, the NBA has done an exceptional job of captivating an international audience. Their presence in countries like India and China speaks volumes for themselves. Another variable that we haven’t factored in till now is the prospect of revenue. International marketing campaigns, paired with ticket sales, merchandise sales, and broadcast revenue really do the trick when it comes to NBA expansion. Recently, Abu-Dhabi hosted preseason games as a part of NBA’s collaboration with the UAE.

Speaking of other sports, it is only fair to mention Cricket, which is making its return to the Olympics for the first time since the year 1900. After 128 years, the Olympics decided to admit Cricket to its long list of sports and maybe the 2.5 billion worldwide audience is the reason behind it. An average Cricket game takes at least 7-8 hours to conclude, so to counter this, a shorter version of the game, T20 is added to the Olympics LA28 list. Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world and it took more than 100 years for it to be featured on such a monumental platform.

“Think [about] my friend here Virat [Kohli]. He’s the third-most followed athlete in the world on social media with 340 million followers. That’s more than LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods combined. This is the ultimate win-win,” Niccolo Campriani mentioned to CBC Sports.

It is only logical for the NFL to follow in the same footsteps, and they are in the right direction. On multiple occasions, the NFL has hosted overseas games in countries like Japan, Argentina, and the UK in an attempt to garner an international fanbase. It was pointed out on the Joe Pomp Show that the NFL has raised the revenue ceiling to $20 Billion this year and international games are a huge part of it. Flag Football gives the NFL an immense opportunity to get revenue, and make the sport international while reaching more people than they ever have.

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The NFL’s expansion comes with a lot of questions and the easiest way to counter these questions and take the first step is to take part in the LA28 Flag Football.

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