Dee Lab | Just Women’s Sports
The NFL is putting women on the gridiron, with commissioner Roger Goodell announcing plans to launch both a men’s and women’s professional flag football league at Thursday’s Leaders in Sport conference in London.
Looking to have both new ventures up and running in “the next couple of years,” the NFL’s goal is to introduce the leagues prior to the 2028 Summer Games in LA, where flag football will make its Olympic debut.
“The demand is there. We’re seeing colleges in the States and universities internationally also that want to make it a part of their program,” Goodell said. “If you set that structure up where there’s youth leagues, going into high school, into college, and then professional, I think you can develop a system of scale. That’s an important infrastructure that we need to create.”
Building that infrastructure also feeds the ongoing NFL goal of growing flag football in order to construct a young fanbase for the gridiron sport at-large, with the league investing in a fan pipeline to support the NFL’s future.
In part due to past NFL investments, women’s flag football has seen significant growth across the US over the last 25 years, with over 30 states now offering competitive opportunities for high school girls — and at least half of those states fielding it as a full-fledged varsity championship sport.
Even the NCAA is getting in on the action, taking initial steps earlier this year to introduce flag football across all three of the governing body’s divisions in the near future.
Though the LA Olympics are three years away, flag football is already charging ahead on the international stage, featuring in the 2022 and 2025 World Games — where the same US talent that the NFL is eyeing for its new league snagged a pair of silver medals.