Flag football, a non-contact variant of American football, is rapidly gaining popularity in the UK. The number of participating schools is increasing rapidly, with participation expected to reach 100,000 by 2026.
Spurred on by a vigorous campaign by the New York-based NFL to encourage young people in Britain to try the less violent alternative, teams with names like the Northants Ducks, the South Coast Spitfires and the London Fruit Bats are experiencing increasing demand.
School PE teachers have reported an increase in interest from children, partly due to the sport’s growing global profile and parental concerns that rugby and full-contact American football pose too high a risk of brain injury. This year, 343 schools took part in UK NFL Flag National Championship events, a 78% year-on-year increase.
“The last three years have been a real boom,” said Jay Taylor, who founded the Fruit Bats flag football club in Ealing, west London. “Flag football has a chance to survive here because there’s nothing else like it.”
Flag football has also gained popularity following the International Olympic Committee’s decision to include the sport for the first time in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and the NFL’s decision to move its season-ending Pro Bowl game from full-contact to a flag game.
It’s one of a number of new sports growing rapidly in the UK, including pickleball, a version of short tennis played with a heavy bat that has become hugely popular in California and is now played from Cornwall to Newcastle. Padel, a cross between tennis and squash that is beloved by professional footballers, is also spreading, with former Wimbledon champion Andy Murray among the opening courts.
Flag football is a version of the game in which defenders perform tackles by grabbing a cloth “flag” attached to each player’s belt with Velcro, rather than the kind of crushing physical assault that parents and doctors increasingly fear can cause long-term brain damage. Instead of 11 fully armored players on each side, five to seven take the field in nothing but shorts, T-shirts and sneakers. The principles of the game are the same — the offense tries to move the ball through a series of pre-planned plays while the defense tries to stop them.
The Fruit Bats already have 70 players aged 14 and under. Compared to football, which is played by more than 3.3 million children, the chances of success are greater. A major attraction seems to be the annual invitation from the NFL to the best school teams to participate in an international tournament in Florida.
Taylor said the NFL and several of its professional teams also quickly supported schools and clubs by providing balls and flag belts. The Jacksonville Jaguars have promoted “Jag Tag” in the United Kingdom for several years. This year, the New York Jets, owned by Donald Trump’s former ambassador to the United Kingdom, Woody Johnson, and the Chicago Bears announced an expansion of their girls tag football league in the United Kingdom.
Jacob and Leia, both 11, are members of the Little Ealing primary school team that won the national title this year and will compete in the NFL Flag World Championships in Florida in February 2025.
Leia, who played her first game at age 10, said: “I didn’t know the sport yet. You get to run a lot more and there’s a playbook which is a lot of fun and the quarterback gets to call the shots.
“You have to be able to jump high, take up space, keep an eye on the ball, run fast and dodge players.”
Jacob added: “You have to make sure you listen well and really understand what you’re doing.”
Amid the school’s success, gym teacher Bobby Behzadi said he had been inundated with a “ridiculous” number of players keen to join next year’s team, their interest sparked by the possibility of a trip abroad. But part of the popularity is the variety of roles on each team that suit people with different strengths.
“Speed helps, but thinkers can also play a role,” Behzadi said. “It’s a cat-and-mouse game. There’s a lot of decision-making and exploiting and finding weaknesses in the opposing defense. We have guys who may not be the fastest runners, but they have good arms and can play quarterback.”