NFL's Pro Flag League Will Have a Draft and a Combine
NFL executive Peter O'Reilly confirmed that the league's upcoming professional men's and women's flag football leagues, launching as early as late spring 2027, will mirror the NFL's structure with a full combine and draft process ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
At a Glance
- The NFL's professional men's and women's flag football leagues are targeting a late spring or early summer 2027 launch, with a combine and draft built into the structure from day one.
- Peter O'Reilly, the NFL's executive vice president of club business, international and league events, confirmed the framework on the Up & Adams show, calling the project a distinct sport with its own pathway rather than a feeder system to tackle football.
- The league is backed by roughly $192 million in total funding, with $32 million from NFL owners and $160 million from investment firms, alongside a star-powered investor group that includes Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Serena Williams, and Billie Jean King.
The NFL is closer to building a professional flag football league than it has ever been, and the structure is starting to look familiar. Speaking on the Up & Adams show on May 18, Peter O'Reilly, the league's executive vice president of club business, international and league events, said the new men's and women's pro flag leagues are targeting a launch in late spring or early summer of 2027, and that the on-ramp will include a combine and a draft modeled on the format that has defined the NFL for decades.
"There's going to be a combine for this pro flag league," O'Reilly told host Kay Adams. "There's going to be a draft. There's going to be an opportunity to play this sport at the highest level, and it's going to be awesome."
A Familiar Blueprint, A New Sport
O'Reilly framed the league as a distinct competitive product rather than a developmental arm of tackle football, though he left the door open to overlap. Asked whether the league would feed talent into the NFL, he told Adams it could be "a little bit of both," adding that "you'll see maybe there is some pathway component to it, but I think more than anything, it is a distinct sport, a distinct path." On the women's side, he said, the league will draw "the best of the best from around the world."
The combine-and-draft structure suggests the NFL intends to treat the new league with the same operational seriousness it applies to its primary product. O'Reilly acknowledged the league is still being designed in real time, telling Adams the NFL is "in the lab, if you will, of really building what that league's going to be like," including the schedule, format, and host cities.
The Money and the Names
The financial scaffolding for the venture is already taking shape, and the numbers are significant. The league is backed by roughly $192 million in total funding, with $32 million coming from NFL owners and another $160 million from outside investment firms. The institutional capital gives the project a runway that most startup pro leagues never see and signals that the financial community views flag football as a serious commercial asset, not a novelty.
That base is layered with a long list of high-profile individual investors. Among the current and former NFL stars backing the league are Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Larry Fitzgerald, Steve Young, Justin Tuck, Ryan Nece, Dhani Jones, Arik Armstead, Bobby Wagner, and Russell Wilson.
The women's investor group is anchored by some of the most recognizable names in global sport, including tennis pioneer Billie Jean King, Ilana Kloss, soccer star Alex Morgan, and Serena Williams. The breadth of the cap table, mixing institutional money, NFL ownership, and athlete-investors from multiple sports, gives the league an unusual level of credibility before a single game has been played.
The NFL announced its partnership with TMRW Sports, the venture co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, in March 2026. TMRW's previous launch, the alternative golf league TGL, completed a successful first season and gave the NFL a partner with experience in standing up a tech-forward, made-for-television pro league.
The Olympic Window
The strategic logic is hard to miss. Flag football makes its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, and the NFL has spent years positioning itself as the sport's most influential global promoter. With 20 million participants across roughly 100 countries at the youth, men's, and women's levels, flag football is already one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, and the Olympic stage offers a marketing platform no league office could build on its own.
Launching a domestic pro league a full year before the Games gives the NFL time to build broadcast rhythms, develop recognizable athletes, and seed storylines that can be paid off in front of a global audience in Los Angeles. It also lets the league test the format publicly before the Olympic spotlight arrives.
The Competition and the Stakes
The NFL is not the only operator betting on pro flag football. The Fanatics Flag Football Classic, the Tom Brady-led exhibition held in March at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, drew 650,000 viewers on Fox and featured a mix of NFL talent, content creators, and the USA men's national team. That event has since faced questions about its long-term funding after reporting from Front Office Sports indicated that Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority, originally lined up as a backer, may be stepping back following the relocation of the event from Riyadh.
The NFL's project is structurally different. With league ownership, institutional capital approaching $200 million, a defined launch window, and a combine-and-draft format that will give the new league the same procedural milestones fans already follow each spring, the venture is being built to last beyond a single exhibition. If the timeline holds, flag football will move from a fast-growing recreational sport to a fully operational professional league inside of 14 months, with the Olympic Games waiting at the finish line.