Mumbai: Cricket and flag football were among five sports added to the programme for the 2028 Los Angeles Games on Monday after gaining the approval of the International Olympic Committee as it looks to tap into new global audiences.
Lacrosse, squash, and baseball-softball had also been proposed for inclusion by LA Games organisers and received approval at an IOC meeting in Mumbai.
Each host city, under IOC rules, can request the inclusion of several sports for their edition of the Games.
The five sports had already been given the nod from the powerful IOC Executive Board last week, with the session on Monday approving its recommendation with a show of hands.
Cricket, which enjoys a massive following in India and has a fast growing global audience, returns to the Games after more than a century, having appeared once at the 1900 Olympics, with a proposed six-team Twenty20 format for men and women.
T20 is a short format of the game.
The IOC hopes cricket’s inclusion will activate and engage a large, new Olympic audience, especially among Asian fans of the sport.
The annual Indian Premier League cricket tournament, with an estimated brand value of $8.4 billion, is one of the richest leagues in the world across sports and continues to attract the world’s top players and coaches to India.
The tournament is played in the same T20 format that will feature during the LA Games.
While all five sports’ inclusion is for only one edition of the Games, they are banking on the boost provided by participation to spur growth and remain an attractive Olympic product going into the next four-year cycle.
Flag football is a non-contact format of American football played by teams of five. American football last featured as a demonstration sport in the 1932 LA Games.
“We are convinced that flag football will offer an exciting new dimension to the Games — uniting them, for the first time in history, with America’s number one sport in its youngest, most accessible and inclusive format,” said Pierre Trochet, head of the International Federation of American Football.
Baseball has featured in several previous Games. It was added to the 2020 Tokyo program after being left off in 2012 and 2016, but it will not be a part of the Paris Games.
Softball, the female counterpart to baseball, has appeared at five previous editions of the Summer Games and was also left off the Paris agenda.
Lacrosse twice appeared as a medal sport at the Olympics, in 1904 and 1908, while squash had long pushed for inclusion, most recently in 2013 for the 2020 Olympics.
“The inclusion of squash … is a significant breakthrough for the sport,” U.S. Squash Chief Executive Kevin Klipstein said.
“Being part of the Olympic Games has been a long-held goal for the squash community, and inclusion will serve as a catalyst to increase awareness of what is already a major participatory sport globally with a long and diverse history.”
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly and Karolos Grohmann; Writing by Karolos Grohmann, Editing by Toby Chopra and Peter Rutherford)
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