By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The National Football League (NFL) is determined to make a big splash at its first regular-season game in Australia but out in the Melbourne suburbs, a quieter revolution is brewing without the helmets, shoulder pads and big hits.
Non-contact flag football, which will make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, may be the NFL's best chance of turning American football from a TV product into a genuine participation sport outside the United States.
As the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams prepare for their season-opener at the 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground, NFL officials and former players have been visiting schools and running clinics in Melbourne to preach the virtues of flag in a market that loves team sports.
Former Rams wide receiver Torry Holt, a seven-times Pro Bowl player, took students through an introductory session of flag at Balwyn High school in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, giving notes on how ball-carriers can develop evasive skills.
“Flag football is so inclusive; everybody can play it. Girls, boys, little kids, little girls -- everybody," Holt told Reuters.
"It's not as expensive to play because you don't need all the gear. So I'm super excited about where flag football is and the States are excited about what it could be internationally."
OLYMPIC DREAMS
A commercial behemoth, the NFL is convinced its biggest growth will come from non-U.S. markets and that flag can be the key to unlocking them.
It lobbied hard to get flag at the LA Games and has invested heavily in developing it at grassroots level in strategic foreign markets like Australia.
The league says flag is now played in more than 500 schools around the country.
The idea is to get children playing flag first and worry about converting them into NFL fans later.
“People don't inherently play (American) football,” Gerrit Meier, the head of NFL International, told Reuters.
“So we need to create a relevance that goes way beyond the NFL.”
That means accepting there will be no quick commercial returns from investment and instead measuring success as a participation game.
“If suddenly I can get the education minister to say, ‘You know what? We should put flag into the school system,’ and we have more boys and girls playing it in school -- there's no commercial return but it's definitely on my list of what constitutes winning in that market.”
While the LA Games will give flag's profile a huge boost, keeping it relevant may be a challenge without a guaranteed spot on the Olympic programme.
Flag was approved specifically for Los Angeles but will need to fight to retain its spot on the 2032 Brisbane Olympics programme along with squash, cricket and other sports.
Flag football officials have made their pitch to 2032 Games organisers, whose programme choices must be signed off by the International Olympic Committee before they are confirmed likely later this year.
NFL teams have backed flag and more than 200 NFL players are interested in playing it at the Olympics, the league said last month.
Flag's 2032 fate will be decided before LA 2028, but the prospect of NFL stardust sprinkled over the Olympics on an ongoing basis may not hurt its chances of retention.
Meier said players on multi-million dollar contracts could not help but be attracted by the "carrot" of an Olympic gold medal.
"You've seen it in basketball, you've seen it in tennis. It is very meaningful to be part of the Olympic movement," he said.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Peter Rutherord)
