There are some basic rules around the Olympic Games. Like participating countries must maintain sports federations in competing sports, and countries must qualify through a range of qualifying standards and competitions, and, of course, no tackling. Well, the last one isn’t for the Olympics per se, but specifically its newest sport, flag football, which will be added for the 2028 Los Angeles games. It is actually one of five new sports, including lacrosse and the revival of baseball and softball. Not included is breakdancing, which will have its moment in the 2024 Parisian games. The new sports approved overwhelmingly for Los Angeles are strikingly team oriented and American centric, minus cricket, which will also be contested in Los Angeles and drive broadcast rates in India’s massive television market up considerably. But with flag football, this is a clear nod to the power of American sports business.
Historically, there have been a range of reasons why a sport may be added to the Games – or at times subtracted. They typically have to do with global popularity, history, cost of facilities, and the welfare of participating athletes, among other things. Also important is how much the host city wants any particular sport. So while Paris may like breakdancing, Los Angeles is more partial to football and baseball. New sports have to be approved by voting members of the IOC, which all new sports for LA resoundingly were, with the exception of a couple of nations that perceived adding sports like football as an American overreach for a game largely ignored by entire continents. What is clear is that having the right new sports can drastically change the popularity and economic success of an Olympics, especially for the country that holds the bill for hosting. So adding America’s most popular sport, even in a mutated form, stands to generate quite a bit of American interest. And that’s not just in person, but also and more importantly, on television, or whatever we’re calling screens these days. Which means that American Olympic media rights holder NBC is happy, which means that the IOC can keep selling expensive rights deals, which means that the Olympic movement has a better chance of surviving what felt like certain doom with rising costs and waning interest only a few years back, when it seemed that increasingly only oppressive governments wanted to host.
Beyond NBC and the IOC, the NFL stands to gain considerably from a football friendly Olympics, especially one with the reduced injury risk that comes with flag football as opposed to the gladiator games we see every Sunday. As the NFL looks to grow their game both in the US, for which flag football has become an increasingly important tool, or globally in the context of an international sporting event, football in the Olympics is like getting your new restaurant a positive review in the NY Times. And it’s not just the sport, but the athletes themselves, a small group of which can now chase the individual branding that comes from winning a gold medal for your country. Considering football makes the majority of its athletes relatively anonymous despite the sport’s popularity, Olympic flag football can make mega stars out of mere millionaires – and without the shield of a helmet and body armor, one of the inherent challenges of football fame. Of course, with that will come a new round of corporate sponsors eager to monetize the Olympic spectacle through athletic and national pride.
So what does that all mean, what does it mean to add flag football and a bunch of other sports that largely benefit American tastes and medal counts? Two things. First, it’s a reminder that the Olympics is a lot of things, but it’s not static. Track and field may always be a fixture of the Games, but this is not your parents Olympics. And I imagine change may be the only real constant of an event build upon historical tradition. Second, in case anyone was confused, make no mistake that when it comes down to it, when you talk about gold and the Olympics, we’re not really talking about medals. We’re talking about the remarkable impact money has on the Olympic movement. Everything that happens around the Olympic Games is dictated not primarily by the sporting ethos, but by fiscal intentions. Does the world really care that much about flag football? Not really. But Nike does. As does NBC. Which is a lot more relevant to the Olympic movement today than the purity of fencing. Is Olympic gold important? Of course. But so is Olympic green.
That may be the most important Olympic rule of all. That, and no tackling.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler
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