Ashlea Klam Named TMRW Sports' First Flag Football Ambassador

TMRW Sports has named Ashlea Klam as its first professional flag football ambassador, giving the men's and women's pro league it is building with the NFL one of the sport's brightest young stars as a public spokesperson. The Orlando-based company, founded by Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and sports executive Mike McCarley, announced the role on June 24 and said Klam would represent it this week at Sport Beach during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The appointment ties a single recognizable athlete to a league that is still taking shape. TMRW Sports and the NFL plan to launch the professional circuit before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, with teams of the best women and men in the world and a tech-forward, data-rich broadcast built to deepen fan engagement. "To be part of shaping the future of flag football is incredibly meaningful," Klam said. "The momentum behind the sport is undeniable. And the opportunity to support TMRW Sports' development of a professional league alongside the NFL is something I'm honored to be a part of and help build together."

Ashlea Klam in USA Football colors. Klam earned a spot on the U.S. women's national flag football team at age 18 and won gold at the 2024 IFAF World Championship. (Photo: USA Football, via Wikimedia Commons)

From Austin to a World Title

Klam grew up in Austin, Texas, one of several sports she took up as a kid alongside soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball and track. She started playing flag at around age six or seven after watching her older brother Peyton, at a time when few girls in her local, mostly-boys league played the game. Her parents, Jason and Amber, built a pathway where one barely existed, founding the all-girls Texas Fury program in Austin. What began as a single six-girl team has grown into one of the most successful all-girls flag programs in the country, fielding 13 teams across Texas in 2025.

That foundation carried her onto the national stage fast. Klam earned a spot on USA Football's women's national flag football team at just 18 years old, among the youngest players ever to make the roster, and helped Team USA capture the 2024 IFAF Women's Flag Football World Championship along with the 2023 IFAF Americas Continental Championship. "Flag football has no ceiling," she told NBC Sports of her path to the national team, a line that has tracked closely with the sport's trajectory since.

A Record-Setting Seahawk

At Keiser University in West Palm Beach, Florida, where she studies sports management on a scholarship, Klam became one of the most decorated players in the young history of college flag. As a freshman in 2024 she led the NAIA with 27 receiving touchdowns and ranked second nationally with 1,116 receiving yards, then flipped to defense as a sophomore in 2025 and led the country with 14 interceptions. A First Team All-American, she powered the Seahawks to three consecutive national championship game appearances from 2024 through 2026 and was named the 2026 NAIA Flag Football Player of the Year.

Her college career is not over, and her next move underscores how quickly the collegiate game is expanding. For her senior season, Klam will compete for California Polytechnic State University, billed as the first NCAA Division I women's flag football program on the West Coast. The move comes as the NCAA, which approved flag football as part of its Emerging Sports for Women program, has recommended that Divisions I, II and III add a National Collegiate Flag Football Championship as early as spring 2028.

More Than an Athlete

Klam's influence extends well beyond the field. At 20, she is the youngest member of USA Football's Board of Directors, where she provides an athlete's voice on a board that includes chairman General Peter W. Chiarelli, NFL legend Mike Golic, Green Bay Packers leader Mark Murphy and Indianapolis Colts executive Pete Ward. As an NFL-IFAF Global Flag Ambassador, she advocates for the growth of flag organizations and for girls' access to the sport.

She has also carried the game abroad and onto the screen. In February 2024 she served as an American Football Sports Envoy with the U.S. Department of State, traveling to Sao Paulo, Brazil to work with youth from underserved communities around Super Bowl week. A former child actor nicknamed "Hollywood," Klam appeared in National Geographic's miniseries The Long Road Home and the film Jack's Apocalypse before joining national team teammates in the NFL's Super Bowl LIX commercial "NFL Flag 50," a campaign aimed at inspiring all 50 states to sanction girls' high school flag football as a varsity sport.

Building Toward a Pro League

Klam's appointment lands at a moment of explosive growth for the sport. "Ashlea represents the drive, leadership and competitive spirit that are fueling flag football's remarkable rise in the United States and all around the world," McCarley said. "As a spokesperson for the sport, Ashlea's voice is welcomed as we set a standard for professional flag football for women and men." TMRW Sports, which also operates the TGL golf league with the PGA TOUR and is launching a women's counterpart with the LPGA, is developing the flag league in partnership with the NFL and 32 Equity, the league's collective investment vehicle, with backing from NFL club owners, institutional investors and current and former players.

The numbers behind the push are substantial. More than 20 million people play flag football worldwide, and roughly 4.1 million youth play in the United States alone, a more than 50 percent increase since 2020. The sport is now offered at the high school level in 40 states, the number of young women playing on high school teams rose nearly 60 percent from 2024 to 2025, and more than 200 colleges and universities offer women's flag programming. A professional tier would cap a pathway that runs from youth fields to high schools, colleges and national teams, and Klam, who continues to elevate the game ahead of its Olympic debut at Los Angeles 2028, now sits at the front of it.