With NFL players now officially allowed to compete in flag football at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, discussion about building Team USA—and some other national squads—will be top of mind for fans, players, and media members alike.

But there are several key rules and provisions to know as the discourse builds over the next three years. The NFL and the International Federation of American Football worked together to get approval from the International Olympic Committee in 2023.

Who Can Play?

Only one player from each NFL team can compete for a specific national team, so multiple players from the same franchise can participate—as long as they’re representing different countries.

For example, stars like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce wouldn’t be able to team up for the U.S. However, Mahomes could lace it up for Team USA while his teammate George Karlaftis plays for Greece, if they qualify.

Additionally, each NFL team’s designated international player (who is allowed to occupy an extra spot on the practice squad) may compete for his country, regardless of other players from the team competing. Those players are typically not well-known stars.

What Are the X’s and O’s?

The game itself is a 5-on-5 format: one quarterback and four receivers/running backs, one of whom begins the play at center. Defenders are allowed to blitz, provided they start from at least 7 yards behind the line of scrimmage.

The game is played in two 20-minute halves on a field that’s 70 yards long (including end zones) and 25 yards wide. The offense has four plays to cross midfield for a first down, at which point it becomes 1st-and-goal. There is no kicking, so after a touchdown, teams have the option to go for one or two extra points, with a single play from 5 yards or 12 yards, respectively. 

Which Nations Will Make It?

The Olympic flag football competition will include teams from six nations, featuring 10 players per squad. 

A record 31 nations participated in the 2024 IFAF Flag Football World Championship. The top six finishers in the men’s competition were, in order, the U.S., Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, France, and Italy. 

The other nations in the championship round were Canada, Denmark, Israel, Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Panama, Spain, Australia, and the Czech Republic. The qualification process for flag football at the Los Angeles Olympics has not yet been determined. 

What Will the Turnout Be?

It remains to be seen how many NFL players will end up on Olympic teams.

During the basketball competition at the 2024 Paris Games, a record 51 current NBA players were on Olympic rosters. There will be no restrictions on former NFL players competing in Olympic flag football. 

Canada typically has the largest number of non-U.S. players in the NFL. Current notable names include Panthers running back Chuba Hubbard and Bills receiver Josh Palmer. 

For Team USA and others, there could also be the potential of pairing veteran, championship-winning flag football players with NFL players.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

NFL owners are discussing a potential multiyear contract extension for commissioner Roger Goodell, according to Front Office Sports sources, a move that, if completed, would extend the tenure of one of the longest-serving leaders in major pro sports and also keep him around for a series of key upcoming league initiatives. The matter, while still in development, did not formally come up at this week’s spring meetings in Minnesota. 

Just 19 months after completing a prior, three-year extension running through March 2027, owners are considering another contract term that would extend Goodell to around 2030. Already, Goodell is set to earn around $700 million since becoming commissioner in 2006, a sum nearly twice the career earnings of any player in NFL history. A new term would add significantly to that total. 

Though speculation has remained somewhat steady about the potential timing and nature of a commissioner succession at the NFL, there remains plenty of reason for the 66-year-old Goodell to stay. The league continues to distance itself as not only the most dominant pro sports league in North America but also the top programming in U.S. television, regardless of genre. A run of new audience records and rising revenue included an unprecedented average viewership of 127.7 million for Super Bowl LIX in February. 

Next Up

An extension for Goodell, meanwhile, would ensure he will be in place for a series of major projects coming up for the league in the next several years. Among them:

• A new set of TV deals, as most of the league’s domestic-rights deals include an opt-out after the 2029 season, with one involving ESPN following a year later. It’s all but certain that the NFL will exercise those options and seek even greater media-rights fees.
• A new labor deal with the NFL Players Association. The current deal expires in March 2031, and a successor pact will need to account for the league’s expanding revenue.  
• The potential arrival of an 18-game regular season, a move also poised to enlarge the NFL’s earning power.
• The creation of a full, 16-game slate of international games each season as part of an accelerating global strategy that includes seven such games this year.
• Forthcoming stadiums under construction for the Bills and Titans, and potentially the Commanders. 
• The continuing expansion of the draft, an event targeted to reach a new attendance milestone in 2027 in Washington, D.C.

There was some surprising pushback on Wednesday elsewhere, however, as expected votes to amend the playoff format and ban the Tush Push both failed to garner sufficient owner support. 

With at least 21 years in office, and likely more, Goodell continues to establish himself as one of the most tenured commissioners in sports. The NHL’s Gary Bettman has been in that spot for 32 years and counting. Major League Soccer’s Don Garber celebrated his 25th anniversary last summer.

MLB is entering the all-important Memorial Day weekend with significant momentum in attendance and viewership, thanks to some power teams and a successful introduction of its Rivalry Weekend promotion.

The long holiday weekend is often a starting point for when these key metrics for the league begin to pick up meaningfully for the critical summer months. This year, however, the league has benefited from a sizable early bump compared to last year.

So far this season, MLB attendance is up by 2% to an average of 27,612 per game, advancing on the 1.3% gain at the beginning of May and helping confirm preseason expectations of a third-straight annual increase at the gate. 

Each of the three main national media-rights partners, meanwhile, has posted viewership increases in the early going of the 2025 season, with ESPN up by 12% despite plans to opt out of its MLB deal after this year, Fox up by 8%, and TNT Sports up by 15%.

A significant piece of that overall lift was the May 16–18 Rivalry Weekend, a scheduling format that had teams across the league playing against a geographically near or historical rival, such as Mets-Yankees, Angels-Dodgers, and White Sox–Cubs. 

The move in some ways harkened back to the earliest iterations of interleague play in the late 1990s, long before it became a much broader and everyday occurrence in MLB. Fans embraced the clustering, as the weekend attendance of 1.6 million represented the league’s largest such total before Memorial Day since 2012. ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball coverage of the finale of the Mets-Yankees series drew an average audience of 2.54 million, marking the most-watched game of the season on any network, and the network’s largest viewership for the primetime showcase since 2018. 

Similarly, MLB said merchandise sales, social media views, and consumption on MLB.TV during Rivalry Weekend also rose by significant, double-digit percentages compared to the same weekend a year ago. 

The creation and promotion of Rivalry Weekend represented another move by the league to elevate portions of a six-month, 162-game schedule, one that will also include the recently announced return of Players’ Weekend in August. That event was revived last year after a five-year hiatus.

The Mets-Yankees series, meanwhile, also offered a crescendo in the ongoing turmoil surrounding Mets outfielder Juan Soto. 

A key element of MLB’s broader attendance and viewership increases has been the presence of big-market superstars such as the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, and Soto. Those three teams are each up meaningfully at the gate so far this season. The Dodgers and Mets will face each other for the first time since the National League Championship Series last Fall, won by Los Angeles. The finale on Sunday will be the next SNB game.