NFL and American Football Australia Partner to Grow Flag Football in Schools Nationwide
GOLD COAST, Australia — Flag football just got a major boost Down Under. The NFL and American Football Australia announced Thursday a first-of-its-kind agreement that will bring flag football into schools across the country through a nationwide Sporting Schools program.
What's Actually Changing
Here's the practical breakdown: flag football school programs currently run separately by AFA and the NFL will now be unified under the NFL Flag brand, and they'll officially become part of the Australian Sports Commission's National Sporting Schools program. That program has been around since 2015, giving primary and secondary school students across the country a way to try new sports, build confidence and stay active — and flag football is now stepping into that pipeline in a big way.
Why the Timing Matters
This isn't a random moment for this announcement. Flag football is heading to the Olympics for the first time at the Los Angeles 2028 Games, and interest in the sport has been exploding well before that. Charlotte Offord, the NFL's general manager for Australia and New Zealand, called Australia one of the most exciting growth markets for flag football globally, and said the timing lines up perfectly with the sport's Olympic debut on the horizon.
Wade Kelly, chief executive officer of American Football Australia, was just as enthusiastic, describing the partnership as putting "the world's biggest football brand" behind the organization's grassroots ambitions. He said Sporting Schools has become the foundation Australia's flag football programs are built on, and he's confident the country's future Olympic flag football players will come directly out of it.
The Numbers Behind the Growth
Flag football isn't a niche sport anymore — more than 20 million people play it across over 100 countries worldwide, and participation is climbing fastest among young athletes and girls specifically. In Australia alone, the NFL's national flag competition has grown from a modest pilot program in just 10 schools back in 2022 to more than 500 schools and over 100,000 students now competing in state, national and international tournaments.
Australia's national teams are also proving the growth is translating into real competitive success. The men's team currently ranks eighth in the world, while the women's team sits at 10th. Both squads medaled at the 2025 IFAF Asia-Oceania Flag Football Championships, with the men taking gold and the women claiming silver.
What's Coming Next
The momentum isn't slowing down anytime soon. Next week, the world's top flag football nations head to Düsseldorf, Germany for IFAF World Flag 26, running Aug. 13-16 — the first direct Olympic qualifying event for the Los Angeles 2028 Games.
And Australian football fans have even more to look forward to closer to home. This announcement comes as the NFL gears up for the country's first-ever regular season game, when the San Francisco 49ers face the Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday, Sept. 11 at 10:35 a.m. AEST (Thursday, Sept. 10 at 8:35 p.m. ET in the U.S.).
Between the grassroots school investment and a marquee regular season game landing on Australian soil for the first time, it's clear the NFL is playing a genuine long game in this market — and betting that today's schoolkids running flag routes could be tomorrow's Olympians.
