Cricket among four new sports to join 2028 Olympics as bosses cave in to demand

Four new sports, including cricket, are set to be included at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Cricket, baseball, softball and flag football will all be added to the Olympic programme following Paris next year. According to the Guardian, the Olympic organisers will confirm this week that the quarter of sports will be included in Los Angeles.

Additionally, both squash and lacrosse could also be set for inclusion at the 2028 games. Cricket has been played at the Olympics before, with England and France battling it out for a gold medal in Paris back in 1900.

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And now it looks set to be reintroduced over 100 years later, with the IOC keen to tap into the Asian market. The Guardian also report that cricket's re-inclusion as an Olympic sport will be in the form of a men's and women's T20 tournament.

By adding cricket to the roster of sports at Los Angeles 2028, the hope is that it will allow for the IOC to sell the Olympic broadcast rights in India at a much more lucrative price. The current broadcasting rights in India for the 2024 Paris Olympics is said to be worth just £15.6million.

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However, that figure could rise to as high as £150m if cricket is added to Los Angeles' Olympic roster, making the decision to include the sport a no-brainer for the IOC. Additionally, the NFL have been keen to push for flag football's inclusion at the Los Angeles games.

The NFL have been championing flag football, a five-on-five non-contact variation of American Football, heavily for the past few years, even converting the Pro Bowl into a flag football game.

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Previously, the Pro Bowl, which featured the best the NFL had to offer going up against each other, was full-contact, albeit, played at a slow pace with little contact as players did not want to get injured in a meaningless game right at the end of the season.

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