Mark Cuban backs U.S. women's flag football ahead of LA28 Olympics

Mark Cuban is not just attaching his name to women’s flag football. His philanthropic investment in USA Football is aimed at a program that already has medals, a top global ranking and a clear Olympic target in Los Angeles in 2028.

USA Football said the support is meant to advance the U.S. Women’s Flag Football National Team as the sport builds toward its Olympic debut. Aaron Rodgers has also made a gift to the same program, a sign that the money flowing in now is not about celebrity gloss so much as giving the sport the infrastructure it needs before the spotlight gets even brighter. USA Football, which runs the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, is suddenly being asked to do more than develop players. It has to keep a contender ahead of an Olympic launch.

The results say the Americans are already there. At The World Games 2022 in Birmingham, Alabama, the U.S. women took silver after Mexico beat them 39-6. Two years later in Lahti, Finland, the same program answered back by beating Mexico 31-18 to win gold at the 2024 IFAF Flag Football World Championships. USA Football said the U.S. women entered that event ranked No. 1 in the world, which matters because this is no longer a niche team trying to introduce itself. It is the standard everyone else is chasing.

That is where Cuban’s investment matters most. The sport is officially on the Olympic program for LA28, where flag football will be one of five new sports, and the race now shifts from proving the game belongs to making sure the U.S. women have every advantage when Olympic qualification and roster building get serious. More than 20 million people in over 100 countries play flag football, according to Olympics.com, so the Americans will not have the margin for error they once enjoyed.

The college track is moving too. The NCAA added flag football to its Emerging Sports for Women program in January 2026, then recommended it for championship status in May, with a first championship projected for spring 2028. That means the pipeline is starting to catch up, but not fast enough to make private support irrelevant.

Vanita Krouch, whom USA Football describes as the most decorated woman in U.S. National Team history, remains the face of the program’s push into LA28. The money now entering the sport is buying time, attention and competitive stability for a team that already proved it can win when the brackets tighten.