The NFL increasingly sees flag football as “good for business,” according to Daniel Kaplan of THE ATHLETIC. The league and its 32 teams have been “investing big-time in the contact-free version of the sport” and the newly structured Pro Bowl is “one way to shed more light on it with the game’s biggest stars.” But the real commitment is “at the youth level, both at home and abroad.” Until recently, flag was “largely a sideshow” in the long-growing American sports industrial complex. Flag since the middle of the 2010s is “one of the top-growing youth sports in America,” and as of 2021, 7 million kids played it. Youth leagues “pop up like mushrooms.” Some of the surge is attributed to “growing parental concerns over brain injuries from playing tackle at a young age.” It is also a “reflection of the emphasis on girls’ sports" as flag is played by both genders. But the NFL’s role is also "critical in understanding the popularity, underscoring pro sports leagues’ efforts to hold onto and create young fans in an era of video games and media fragmentation.” More than 1,700 youth flag leagues and teams across the country and Canada are “funded in part” by America’s top sport, with participation numbers “expected to hit 600,000 this year, a nearly doubling of the figure from 2021.” Beyond the investment in youth leagues, the NFL is “putting its media apparatus behind flag with ads promoting the sport," including "one possibly during the Super Bowl” in February (THE ATHLETIC, 12/22).
