Tom Brady and the Fanatics Flag Football Classic are moving their inaugural event from Saudi Arabia to Los Angeles. The venue swap for the March 21 competition comes on the heels of the Iran war and travel advisories in the Middle East. It was slated to be held at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh. In stead, the event featuring numerous NFL players and coaches relocates to BMO Stadium in Exposition Park south of downtown Los Angeles. The home of MLS club LAFC will be the home site when flag football makes its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The field will be full of familiar faces, too, including Brady as the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback makes his first official return to the huddle since his retirement from the NFL in 2023. Brady and Jalen Hurts will serve as captains of the Founders FFC squad, which will be coached by Sean Payton. The other side, Wildcats FFC, is run by Jayden Daniels and Joe Burrow with Kyle Shanahan as their coach. Leading into the event, the captains will draft a 12-player team from a list that includes Saquon Barkley, Myles Garrett, Odell Beckham Jr., Rob Gronkowski and YouTuber-turned-boxer Logan Paul. The commissioners of the event will be recent NFL Football Hall of Famers Drew Brees and Larry Fitzgerald. A third team will be made up of USA Football players. It’s a chance to see how a group of accomplished flag-football players stack up against their NFL counterparts. The USA squad will have Aamir Brown and Darrell “Housh” Doucette serve as captains and Jorge Cascudo as their coach. The format will be played under modified Olympic flag-football rules and on a field measuring 50-by-25 yards. It will feature two 15-minute halves along with a running clock. All three teams square off in a round-robin tournament and the top two squads earn a spot in the championship game. It will produced by Fanatics Studios and be broadcast on FOX Sports, FOX One and Tubi. “This event features our world champion flag football athletes on the same field as some of the top current and former pro tackle stars, and I know our players are up for the challenge,” Scott Hallenbeck, the USA Football CEO and executive director, said in a statement. When are the Los Angeles Olympics? The Olympics will return to Los Angeles for an historic third time in 2028. The LA 2028 Olympics Opening Ceremony is July 14, 2028 with competition through July 30, 2028. The LA28 Paralympic Games will kick off Aug. 15, 2028 and close Aug. 27, 2028.  The organizing committee has released a first look at the competition schedule. Field hockey, basketball, rugby sevens, water polo, handball and cricket will be the first sports to kick off the competition on July 12, two days before the Opening Ceremony. The first full date of competition, designated Day 1, is July 15. The order of events includes a twist for 2028 with track and field and swimming swapping their typical schedules. Track and field will compete at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in the first week of the Olympics schedule with swimming moving to the second week at SoFi Stadium. The marathons will still be on the final weekend. The first medal will be awarded in triathlon on Day 1 in Venice Beach. July 29, or Day 15, will be the busiest day on the podium with 16 gold and bronze events in team sports and 19 individual medal events. Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood will host the opening ceremony in a duel-venue celebration. The Paralympic opening ceremony will be at SoFi Stadium with the closing ceremony at the Coliseum. New for the 2028 Olympics The program approved for 2028 has 22 more medal events than Paris 2024 at 351. Mixed team events added for 2028 include artistic gymnastics, athletics (4×100 mixed gender relay), golf, archery (compound bow), coastal rowing beach sprint and table tennis. The competition format for the new artistic gymnastic mixed team event will be finalized and announced at a later date. The medal competition includes expansions to the field of women’s soccer and water polo event, a new women’s boxing weight class, an expanded 3×3 basketball field, and more medal events in swimming and sport climbing. Flag football will make its Olympic debut in 2028 and lacrosse will return to the lineup of medal sports for the first time in more than a century. Baseball and softball will make their Olympic comeback, and cricket also will be part of the lineup. See the full list of medal events here. ...read more read less