Nairobi \u2013 The NFL went to Kenya over the weekend for its latest competition on the African continent as it seeks to win converts to the sport.<\/p>\n
U.S. sports have increasingly sought to break into the African market, with the NBA launching the high-profile Basketball Africa League, based in Rwanda, in 2019.<\/p>\n
The NFL recently staged its third annual flag football competition in Africa. Flag football, a non-contact version of the sport, has grown in popularity around the world and will make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.<\/p>\n
The three-day competition saw Egypt emerge as the winner of the men\u2019s contest against teams from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, while the women\u2019s contest was won by Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The event also included a session with NFL scouts on the lookout for the next star to join the league.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlag football is very accessible, everybody can play it,\u201d said Osi Umenyiora, who won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants and now heads NFL Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the NFL looks to expand and keep on growing, especially across the continent of Africa… participation is a huge part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know what sport can do for people, it can allow them to escape whatever situation they\u2019re in, and give them hope, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do here,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Nigeria has already earned a place at the flag football world championships in Dusseldorf, Germany, in August \u2014 where it hopes to qualify for the Olympics.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been playing NFL flag football for a long time \u2014 since 2016 \u2014 and the game has exploded to 40 teams (in Nigeria), which gives us the edge over other countries in Africa,\u201d said Nigerian coach Ephraim Faloughi.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought I could be an Olympian \u2014 now we have the opportunity,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The NFL has expanded internationally in recent years, playing a handful of its games in Europe and South America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nairobi \u2013 The NFL went to Kenya over the weekend for its latest competition on the African continent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[6074,64,63,6095,593,297251,85],"class_list":["post-799324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-africa","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-flag-football","tag-nfl","tag-osi-umenyiora","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}