IOC Officially Approves Five New Sports to be Included at LA 2028 Olympic Games

In the 141st session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Olympic Programme Commission and Executive Board officially approved the addition of five new sports to the Olympic program. The vote, which took place earlier today, marks the official decision to add baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse, and squash to the schedule for the 2028 Olympic Games, which will take place in Los Angeles. This decision comes on the heels of the LA28 Organizing Committee proposing these additional sports last week.

Baseball, softball, cricket, and lacrosse are all sports which have been included previously at the Olympics, while flag football and squash will be making their Olympic debuts. For those who may be wondering, as far as the IOC committees are concerned, baseball and softball are a package deal, and therefore considered as one sport, which is why it’s technically five sports being added instead of six.

The addition of these five new sports for the 2028 Olympics is not unusual. Every four years, Olympic hosts are given the opportunity to add provisional sports to the core 28 sports that are included in every Olympic Games. The system is different than the “demonstration” sports in years past in that they’re given full event status, funding, and awards, but are not guaranteed continued inclusion.

There was an original list of nine sports vying to be added to the LA 2028 schedule, which means, of course, that four sports that were excluded. Those four sports were breaking, kickboxing, motor sport, and karate.

“Breaking,” or as it’s more commonly known, break-dancing, is an interesting case. Breaking is being included at the Paris 2024 Olympics next summer, however, LA 2028 organizers have now officially decided to leave it off the schedule for the 2028 Games.

On the other hand, surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing were included at the Tokyo Olympics and were kept on the schedule by the IOC moving forward.

The decisions may in part be informed by the available venues in the LA area. LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman said they favored sports that could be played at existing venues in Southern California, which has been one of the core tenets of organizers’ planning of the Games. He has also emphasized the importance of choosing sports that are “played in backyards, schoolyards, community centers”.

SPORT-BY-SPORT BREAKDOWN

LACROSSE

A sport with North American roots, lacrosse was featured at the 1904 and 1908 Olympic Games and as a demonstration sport at the 1928, 1932, and 1948 Olympic Games.

Pros:

  • This is easily the fastest growing team sport in the United States at the high school and college level, and the audience in the host nation is going to be big.

Cons:

  • The sport is dominated by the US and Canada. Out of 14 all-time lacrosse men’s World Championships since 1967, the US has won 11 and Canada has won the other 3. The last time a non-American team played in the championship game was in 1994, when the US beat Australia 21-7. The final 4 in 2023 featured the US, Australia, Canada, and Haudenosaunee, a team representing the Iroquois nation. There are pockets of success elsewhere in the world (England, Israel, Japan), but by-and-large, Olympic growth areas like Africa and South America are not competitive.
  • Big roster sizes – lacrosse’s standard international roster size is 23, which runs counter to the IOC’s recent goals of focusing on sports with smaller rosters, like Rugby 7s and 3-v-3 basketball.
  • Lacrosse is a relatively-expensive sport to play, limiting its global growth potential.

FLAG FOOTBALL

The less-contact version of American football, flag football is growing in popularity around the world – especially among women. While you might think this was an American-dominated sport, half of the men’s World Championships since 2002 have been won by other nations (including three by Austria), and American women have only won 2 out of the 10 World Championships ever offered. Wasserman himself once owned an arena football league team, so this choice is near-and-dear to his heart.

Pros:

  • NBC, the American host broadcaster, loves football. The inclusion of flag football also gives the IOC a juggernaut global partner in the NFL, which is pushing to grow the sport of football at all levels around the world.
  • So-Fi Stadium, which will host the opening ceremony, is an NFL stadium.

Cons:

  • While football is growing in popularity around the world, there were no women’s African nations represented at the most recent World Championships in 2021. The sport is starting to catch fire in Asia, but those teams were still largely outmatched by American and European counterparts.

BASEBALL AND SOFTBALL

Baseball appeared as a full sport at each Olympic Games from 1992 through 2008 and softball from 1996 through 2008, but both were dropped in 2012. Japan, a baseball-loving nation, brought it back in 2020, but Paris organizers didn’t pick it up.

Pros:

  • This event will sell out instantly. If they can hold the games at Dodgers Stadium, it will be one of the more iconic venues in Olympic history. Organizationally, it’s easy – just send the Dodgers on a two week road trip and continue operations more-or-less as normal.
  • Merchandise sales will be huge.
  • It fits the bill of ‘backyard games’.
  • More nations have become competitive in these sports since they were dropped from the permanent Olympic rotation, though both still have limited reach in Africa and South America.

Cons:

  • Major League Baseball players, the best in the world, have not been included in the Olympics, limiting the starpower of a sport that should be full of it. Perhaps the MLB will see the value of changing that stance after a successful World Baseball Classic earlier this year that featured plenty of major leaguers.
  • Big rosters mean lots of athletes traveling. Both tournaments had only 6 teams in 2020, which kept numbers down, but also really limited a lot of the excitement.

CRICKET

A cashcow that America and the IOC can’t ignore anymore, cricket is estimated to be the world’s second-most popular sport (behind soccer) with around 2.5 billion fans globally. It’s an almost non-existent marketplace in the US, but that is changing rapidly thanks in part to first-and-second generation Americans and the launching of a well-funded professional cricket league.

The IOC recommended a six-team T20 event for both men and women. T20 cricket (also known as Twenty20) is the shortened form of the game, lasting about two-and-a-half hours – as compared to the popular international Test cricket format which are scheduled across five consecutive days.

Pros:

  • A lot of powerful business people, especially those of South Asian descent, are dumping money into the US pro league. This addition should accelerate that process.
  • It opens up the massive Indian market of more than a billion people, which has so far been a tough nut for the IOC to crack.

Cons:

  • It won’t have a big domestic appeal, yet. But it’s coming.

SQUASH

One of a number of racquet sports vying for increased international attention with a general rise in interest for the genre, squash is played by about 20 million people globally in more than 185 countries, making it arguably the most-global sport on this list.

Pros:

  • Once considered a ‘rich man’s sport,’ which is arguably still true in some parts of the Northeastern US, squash has done a lot of work to move form the hallowed halls of private clubs into more public spaces, including rec centers and YMCAs. The equipment is relatively cheap, so for countries willing to invest in the public infrastructure (which again, is not that expensive, giving a small footprint relative to a sport like tennis), the growth potential is huge.
  • A small playing surface means limited infrastructure costs.

Cons:

  • Have you ever watched squash on TV? Bought a ticket to a squash event? I have, but I live 2 miles from the US National Squash Center at Drexel University. There is big potential for squash, but with padel, paddle, and pickleball occupying an increasingly crowded racquet space, it’s hard to see where squash is going to make its breakthrough among the younger demographic.

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STRAIGHTBLACKLINE
11 months ago

The Olympics are becoming too big and a logistical nightmare. My thinking has always been that if a sport has a large following and winning an Olympic gold medal is not the ultimate achievement in that sport e.g. the World Cup in soccer or the Grand Slams in tennis, then it shouldn’t be in the Olympics.

M d e
11 months ago

For me personally the best players in the world making themselves unavailable (or being unavailable), automatically makes the sport one that shouldn’t be included.

Olympics should be about seeing the best of the best athletes in the world not the best under 23s (soccer) or the best outside the MLB or NFL (Baseball/flag football).

Last edited 11 months ago by M d e
RealSlimThomas
Reply to  M d e
11 months ago

There’s no apparent conflict with the NFL. I am optimistic there would be a decent turnout considering it’s a home Olympics. Maybe the fact flag football it is “peewee” in nature will turn them off though.

Just Keep Swimming
Reply to  M d e
11 months ago

It’s interesting how different this opinion is from the early days of the Olympics. Professional athletes weren’t allowed to compete at all. In 1936 a number of skiers were banned because they TAUGHT skiing and that made them considered to be professionals. It was only in the 70s that athletes were allowed to be paid and not until 1988 (!!) that the IOC declared all professionals should be allowed to compete.

In terms of your actual point, I can see where you’re coming from. But there are a lot of sports where Olympic gold is considered a very high achievement but just not THE highest and the Olympics is still a very important event for the sport (cycling, tennis, boxing,… Read more »

Just Keep Swimming
Reply to  Just Keep Swimming
11 months ago

Oops my mind combined your comment and STRAIGHTBLACKLINE. My second paragraph is aimed at them.

Pool
11 months ago

None of these sports should be part of the Olympics. Every time they add a new sport, it takes spots away from existing sports like gymnastics, swimming, track, etc.

Mark69
Reply to  Pool
11 months ago

Gymnastics, swimming and track have all added Olympic events or categories (like trampolining) in the last 20 years, despite new sports being added. Track and field has close to 50 events and swimming 37 (swimming is actually part of the sport of Aquatics, which has even more categories and events). I think other sports may say that the sports you mention (all of which I love) have too many events at the Olympics.

RealSlimThomas
Reply to  Mark69
11 months ago

I agree. Every non-swimming friend I have is incredibly frustrated with how many different swimming events there are. My argument on the defense has become “you have the NFL every Sunday, just let me have this every four years”.

James Richards
Reply to  Pool
11 months ago

You can only win one medal in softball, but swimmers like Dressel, McKeon won 7 medals.

Just Keep Swimming
Reply to  Pool
11 months ago

AS others have said, swimming has 37 events. That’s more than archery, baseball, softball, basketball, surfing, golf, soccer, hockey, equestrian, pentathlon and rugby combined.

Swimming literally just added 3 events at the most recent Olympics so I don’t think it’s in any danger of losing events. To be honest, I would be more than happy for them to ditch those 3 and go back to 34.

Flybkbrfr
11 months ago

Cricket? Matches can last up to 5 days long. Where are they going to play these matches. A common field of play is 150 to 170 yards long. Got to take a look at those logistics.

Aussie Crawl
Reply to  Flybkbrfr
11 months ago

5 day format is known as a test match.
Australia are the ICC World Champions beating India at the
Oval three months ago.

Admin
Reply to  Flybkbrfr
11 months ago

Read this article: https://swimswam.com/la28-olympic-organizers-name-5-new-sports-for-2028-olympic-games/

They’re not playing Test matches, they’re playing Twenty20, which is about a three hour match.

grizzled bastard
Reply to  Flybkbrfr
11 months ago

Regarding the “where,” you’re probably aware LA has a couple very large parks where they’re already building temp venues for the Olympics. They can build easily in Griffith Park or Balboa Park in the valley where they’re already hosting events.

Last edited 11 months ago by grizzled bastard
cynthia curran
Reply to  grizzled bastard
11 months ago

They can also do fields in Ventura or Orange County or Riverside or San Bernadino. A lot of the 1984 events use the other counties besides just LA like Handball was done in Fullerton.

Mark69
Reply to  Flybkbrfr
11 months ago

If you had actually read the article, you would have read that the Olympics will involve T20 cricket (20 overs per side) which takes at most 3 hours to play a game. Major League Cricket was successfully launched this year in the US, with matches in Texas and North Carolina. The diaspora from the Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, countries in which cricket is easily the biggest sport) mean there is already an audience for cricket in the US.

Boknows34
Reply to  Flybkbrfr
11 months ago

It’s T20 cricket and the USA are co-hosting the T20 World Cup next year. T20 is a very fast version of the sport.

Last edited 11 months ago by Boknows34