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Flag football is unquestionably growing from a participatory standpoint. Its standing as a mainstream broadcast property, however, took another hit this past weekend.
The Fanatics Flag Football Classic drew an average television audience on Fox of 641,000 for the round-robin competition and an average of 649,000 for the title game. The event featured many current and former NFL stars, including Tom Brady, Saquon Barkley, and Davante Adams. Despite a late venue change from Saudi Arabia to Los Angeles, due to military action in the Middle East, the event carried plenty of initial build-up.
The broadcast finished nowhere near the top 25 sports events of the week in Nielsen viewership rankings released late Wednesday. The week of March 16 to March 22 included plenty of other high-profile sports broadcasts, including the end of the World Baseball Classic and the beginning of March Madness.
Becoming a Trend
The relatively low viewership for the Fanatic Flag Football Classic follows a declining audience trend for the NFL’s Pro Bowl Games, which has featured a flag-football format the past several years.
Last month, the league staged the event in San Francisco’s Moscone Center as part of events leading up to Super Bowl LX. The game broadcast on a Tuesday night on ESPN, however, averaged just 1.92 million viewers, a staggering 59% drop from the prior, non-pandemic low set in 2025.
Ahead of flag football’s Olympic debut in the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games—an initiative supported by the NFL—the Fanatics event followed Olympic-style flag football rules, and was played on a 50-yard field with two 10-yard end zones, a 5-on-5 format, and two 20-minute halves.
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