The World Games puts flag football on global stage

Six athletes from flag football’s debut at The World Games 2022 were honored on-field at NFL Kickoff in Los Angeles on Sept. 15, 2022, a moment that carried the sport from Birmingham into a much larger television audience. The players came from the six medal-winning teams, and the medals went to teams from Mexico, the United States, Italy and Panama, showing that flag football had already outgrown a regional identity when it entered a global multisport event for the first time.

The World Games tournament in Birmingham, Alabama, featured 16 of the world’s best men’s and women’s teams, and the International World Games Association said the NFL was a Premier Partner of The World Games 2022 and the presenting sponsor of flag football. That backing mattered because it placed the league’s promotional muscle behind a sport The World Games describes as widely played by both men’s and women’s teams. In Birmingham, flag football was presented as a medal sport with national teams, podium finishes and an international field that looked nothing like a novelty exhibition.

Diana Flores became the clearest individual face of that rise. The NFL says the quarterback of Mexico’s women’s national flag football team became the first flag football player to have artifacts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, after her jersey and football from the NFL’s Run With It campaign were added to the museum’s collection. Flores was part of Mexico’s gold-medal team at The World Games 2022, and the same campaign paired her with Vanita Krouch, Billie Jean King and Bella Rasmussen, a mix that tied flag football to both elite performance and broader sports visibility. Olympics.com calls Flores the most recognizable face in flag football and a global ambassador for the game.

Tom Brady gave the sport a different kind of amplification. Olympics.com says Brady played flag football from elementary school through his first year of high school, then later helped launch the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, scheduled for March 21, 2026, in Los Angeles after originally being planned for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event was set to feature Brady, Saquon Barkley, Tyreek Hill, Odell Beckham Jr. and Rob Gronkowski in a three-team round-robin format. Brady will not compete in flag football at LA28, but he will support Team USA when the sport makes its Olympic debut at the Los Angeles 2028 Games, scheduled for July 15-22, 2028, at Exposition Park Stadium with five players on the field from 10-player squads. Olympics.com estimates more than 20 million people across 100 countries play flag football, and the sport’s public identity has been built through moments like Birmingham, faces like Flores and Brady, and stages that made it feel like a destination instead of an afterthought.