Vincent pushes flag football growth as LA 2028 nears

Troy Vincent is trying to turn flag football’s Olympic lift into something bigger than a two-week showcase in Los Angeles. As co-chair of Vision28 with International Federation of American Football president Pierre Trochet, the NFL executive is pushing a sport that already has momentum into a test of whether its growth can reach deep enough at the grassroots level to last beyond LA28.

The scale is real. When the IOC added flag football to the Los Angeles 2028 program in October 2023, IFAF and the NFL said about 20 million people in more than 100 countries were already playing the game, with 65 national representative teams involved in continental competition that year. Flag football also proved it could work on a world stage at The World Games in Birmingham, Alabama, where eight men’s and eight women’s teams competed in 2022, and again at the 2024 World Flag Football Championships in Lahti, Finland, which drew 660 athletes from 32 nations.

Vincent’s message has centered on starting young and building constantly, and the numbers suggest why. In the United States, there are about 4.1 million youth flag participants, women’s high school flag football grew nearly 60% from 2024 to 2025, and more than 100 colleges and universities now sponsor women’s flag football. Nebraska’s launch of a varsity women’s team as the first Power Four Division I program was another signal that the sport is moving from novelty to pipeline.

LA28 will put that pipeline under a brighter microscope. The Olympic debut will be a five-on-five event with six men’s teams and six women’s teams, each carrying 10-player rosters. NFL clubs voted on May 20, 2025, to allow NFL players to compete, and the approved framework calls for one player per NFL team, plus one additional international player if designated, with final qualifying and roster rules still to be worked out with the NFLPA, IFAF and Olympic authorities.

The NFL has also moved beyond promotion and into infrastructure. On March 30, 2026, it announced a partnership with TMRW Sports to develop and operate a professional men’s and women’s flag football league, creating a possible endpoint for a sport that Vincent says should now run from youth leagues to high school, college, the Olympics and, eventually, the pro game. That is the promise of Vision28, but the challenge is bigger than branding. For LA28 to become more than a one-off spotlight, flag football will need more coaches, stronger federation support and sustained international investment long after the medals are handed out.