Five Olympic Sports, Including Flag Football And Lacrosse, Approved For LA28

On Monday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved a proposal by Los Angeles 2028 (stylized as LA28) to add five additional sports to its program for the 2028 Games.

Baseball/softball, cricket (T20), flag football, lacrosse (sixes) and squash will all join a sport program for LA28 that will also feature other sports that made recent Olympics debuts, such as skateboarding and surfing (Tokyo 2020).

Of the five additional sports, flag football and squash join the Olympic program for the first time, while baseball and softball, cricket and lacrosse make their return.

The vote at the 141st IOC Session also confirmed the return of modern pentathlon and weightlifting to the 28 previously announced sports on the program.

As for boxing, which has been part of every Olympic Games since 1920, the IOC has not yet made a decision on whether it will be included at LA28 given the uncertainty surrounding its governing body. In June, the IOC banished the International Boxing Association (IBA) from the Olympics in order to force a change after a yearslong dispute with Russian president Umar Kremlev and the fact that by Russian state energy firm Gazprom was a sponsoring partner of the IBA.

The slight variations in the sport program from host city to host city often reflect the sporting culture of that country; baseball, the most watched and played sport in Japan, was added to the Tokyo 2020 program along with softball, will not be present at the Paris 2024 Games and then will return at LA28.

Cricket was last on the program at the Paris 1900 games and lacrosse was included on the programs of St Louis 1904 and London 1908.

As the Olympics strive to attract younger viewers, more of the sports added to the program—current sports skateboarding, surfing, freestlye BMX and sport climbing and LA28’s five additional sports—reflect that.

LA28 Chairperson Casey Wasserman said the “game-changing collaborations with major professional leagues” for the city’s Games will “unlock massive opportunities to amplify the Olympic and Paralympic story and captivate new audiences.”

The return of baseball and softball to an American-based Games will be a powerful force for continuing to develop the sports at a youth level, per MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. “Major League Baseball has committed significant resources to developing talent, increasing youth participation and deepening fan engagement of baseball and softball around the world,” Manfred said.

In a poetic twist, cricket’s return to the Olympics after more than 100 years was announced at the IOC Session in Mumbai during the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.

South African cricketer AB de Villiers said he is excited that the game will “reach an even wider global audience, and cricketers will now have an opportunity to win an Olympic gold medal, one of the most prestigious accolades in sports.”

Though it will have been exactly 100 years since lacrosse appeared on an Olympic program by the time it’s played at LA28, its inclusion now is more than fitting as it has become one of America’s fastest-growing sports.

Lacrosse, which originated as a game played among Indigenous tribes in what is now the Eastern part of the U.S. and Canada, continues to be popular in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. But with more than 900 NCAA varsity lacrosse programs now available at the Division I, II and III levels, the game’s popularity has reached a national level.

There are also three professional lacrosse organizations—the National Lacrosse League, a men’s indoor league; the men’s outdoor Premier Lacrosse League, which absorbed Major League Lacrosse; and Athletes Unlimited, a network of professional women’s sports leagues that includes basketball, softball, volleyball and lacrosse.

The return of softball and lacrosse to the Games marks a major opportunity for female athletes just as the Olympics have become more balanced than ever—Paris 2024 will be the first Games to achieve full gender parity, with 5,250 men and 5,250 women competing.

Then there’s the addition of squash, another sport that will benefit from an Olympic boost in terms of building its youth participation network and elevating women and men.

“Squash is an amazingly dynamic, diverse and competitive sport that is perfectly suited for the Olympic Games,” said World Squash Federation (WSF) president Zena Wooldridge.

Amanda Sobhy, the No. 1 American Squash player, will be 35 by the time the LA28 Games are held and anticipates the Olympics may be one of her final career events. “To have the chance to compete at LA28 and compete in front of friends and family with a home crowd would just be so meaningful,” Sobhy said. “To be able to say that I finish off my career with the Olympics is really just like a dream come true.”

And finally, there’s flag football, which will use the visibility of the Olympics to show the world how fast it’s growing, especially at the youth and women’s levels.

With head injuries becoming an increasingly significant concern in tackle football, where the wear-and-tear ends players’ careers earlier than they may otherwise have wanted, flag football represents a new opportunity. To that end, former NFL tight end Rob Gronkowski, who would be 39 in 2028, told TMZ recently that the U.S. olympic flag football team should “count [him] in already!”

“We are convinced that flag football will offer an exciting new dimension to the Games—uniting them, for the first time in history, with America’s number one sport in its youngest, most accessible and inclusive format, which is already spearheading extraordinary growth, particularly among youth audiences, women and girls and in new countries worldwide,” said International Federation of American Football (IFAF) president Pierre Trochet.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell also pledged the league’s support to “strengthen flag football’s place in the Olympic movement long term.”

The full LA28 sport program can be viewed on its website.

The LA28 Paralympic sport program is determined by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) in a separate process. Twenty-two sports have already been approved, and the IPC will make a determination on any new sports LA28 may put forward for inclusion—para climbing and para surfing are potential candidates—by the end of 2023.