By Amy Tennery
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Women’s flag football got its moment in the mega-sized Super Bowl spotlight this week in New Orleans, as the NFL moves to harness the momentum of women’s sports in the United States.
With flag football, men’s and women’s, set to make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, the NFL has ramped up its promotion of the sport, hoping the non-tackle version of the game will draw in more women and girls.
A non-contact version of American football, players wear flags attached to their waist that opponents must remove to end a play instead of tackling. Played in teams of five or seven, the sport retains many traditional football elements, including passing, rushing, and strategic play-calling, but emphasizes speed and agility over physical strength.
The league long ago made clear its desire for NFL expansion around the world, announcing games set to play in more international markets this week in New Orleans.
The rapidly growing business of women’s sports is emerging as another avenue for the NFL’s global ambitions, as TV viewership and attendance in leagues like the WNBA and NWSL have steadily climbed over the last few years.
“We’re exploring very aggressively now an opportunity to create a professional flag league for both men and women,” Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters in New Orleans this week.
“This is something that we’ve been working on for several months with a tremendous amount of interest from players, from investors, to people who I think recognize particularly that women’s sports are at a place where it’s real.”
With about 20 million flag football participants globally, more U.S. states are moving rapidly to add it to school sports programs ahead of the domestic Games.
Days before the NFL title game Louisiana conditionally approved the inclusion of girls flag football as a school sport, and would become the 15th state to sanction it when the state’s high school athletic association holds a vote in April.
The movement is growing abroad. International Federation of American Football President Pierre Trochet told Reuters that he saw a surge of interest in the sport after the Los Angeles 2028 announcement.
“When you look at 300,000, potentially half a million kids playing in China, for example, this is a consequence of the last three or four years hype, now inclusion, because of the Olympics,” he said.
At the Super Bowl’s buzzy radio row on Friday modern pioneers for the sport said they could feel the momentum growing.
“The NFL is really pushing for us to compete at the highest level,” said Nausicaa Dell’Orto, a national team member for Italy who first got into the sport as a teenage cheerleader 14 years ago in Milan.
“Game after game I was watching the boys play and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I want to play.’ I don’t want to throw pom poms in the air anymore.”
Dell’Orto was asked to try out for Italy’s bobsleigh team for her home Milano Cortina Games in 2026. But, like other flag athletes, her ambition is focused on Los Angeles.
Phoebe Schecter, a national team member for Britain and commentator for the Sky Sports NFL coverage, said that flag was a way for her to “play the game you see your heroes playing on Sunday.”
“A lot of this was really driven by the women and girls,” said Schecter. “Not everybody necessarily had the opportunity to play tackle or if you did you had to be on a boys’ high school team, elementary school team.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New Orleans; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
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