NFL's Brian Flinn builds flag football from the ground up

The NFL named Brian Flinn senior vice president, global flag football, and based him in New York. The league created the role to build flag football from youth participation through the professional level, and it handed him a mandate that reaches far beyond a single championship weekend.

Why Flinn matters

Flinn brings more than 30 years of leadership experience across sports, entertainment and media. He most recently served as chief operating officer of the Pro Padel League. He previously was partner and COO of Isos Capital Management, chief marketing and communications officer at WWE, and held senior leadership roles at the NBA and the Knicks.

The league is asking him to align partnerships, international expansion and development in a sport that still needs a cleaner pathway from school-age play to elite competition.

The NFL’s flag football ladder

On its Play Football platform, the NFL calls flag football the most inclusive and accessible format for playing the sport, with more than 20 million players in 100 countries. In a LinkedIn post, Flinn said the NFL would use flag football to build a platform that expands access, creates opportunity, deepens fandom and grows the game at every level.

In 2024, the NFL rolled out Olympic messaging around flag football that included Jalen Hurts in its handover material, and it also pushed a Global Rise of Flag Football program presented by Visa that highlighted growth across six continents.

Olympic status changed the stakes

The biggest structural shift came when the International Olympic Committee approved flag football for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics in October 2023. Men’s and women’s flag football are on the LA28 sports program, and on May 20, 2025, NFL clubs voted in Eagan, Minnesota, to permit NFL players to participate in flag football at the 2028 Games.

In April 2025, the USOPC certified USA Football as football’s national governing body in the United States, giving the sport a clearer domestic structure at the same time the Olympic pathway became real. The bottleneck is governance: rules, team selection, eligibility and international alignment.

Westfield shows the pipeline from ground level up

The 2026 NFL Flag Championships presented by Toyota took place July 23-26 at the Droplight Grand Park Sports Campus in Westfield, Indiana, with more than 350 girls and boys teams from across the United States and around the globe competing over four days. The league called it the world’s premier youth flag football tournament and the largest youth flag football tournament in the world, and it was the first time the championships were held in the Indianapolis region.

In a LinkedIn post, Flinn put the event at 3,500 athletes, 350 teams, 13 countries, five continents and 13 divisions. It was the third annual NFL Flag Championships, and the event moved to Westfield for July 23-26, 2026. Grand Park hosted the tournament for the first time.

On July 26, 2026, girls flag football in Indiana reached 100 teams statewide, the threshold needed for Indiana High School Athletic Association sanctioning. The next bottleneck is school infrastructure: coaches, schedules, fields and sanctioned competition.

Where the bottlenecks still are

• Participation: the 20 million players figure does not erase the gap between casual participation and organized retention. The Indiana 100-team threshold shows how much growth is required before a school sport becomes officially recognized.

• Governance: Olympic inclusion and USA Football’s USOPC certification give the sport structure, but international consistency still depends on rules, eligibility and national federations being aligned.

• Facilities: Grand Park can host more than 350 teams across 13 divisions, but not every market has that kind of venue depth. Expansion depends on fields, scheduling and local operators who can absorb tournament demand.

• Monetization: Toyota’s title sponsorship and Visa’s Olympic-era programming show commercial interest, but the real test is whether the sport can keep generating value outside a handful of showcase events.

Flinn previously held senior leadership roles at the NBA and the Knicks, served as chief marketing and communications officer at WWE, was partner and COO of Isos Capital Management, and most recently was chief operating officer of the Pro Padel League.