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Olympics

Olympic programmes used to change slowly and from the centre. That changed when host organising committees won the right to propose additional sports for their own edition, a reform intended to let each Games reflect local culture and, less delicately, local commercial reality. The Los Angeles additions are the clearest illustration yet of what that power is actually used for.

• Flag football — the non-contact, five-a-side variant of American football, with a ready-made domestic audience and the sport's professional infrastructure behind it.
• Cricket, in the twenty-over format, which brings the single largest television market outside the host country into the Games' commercial calculations.
• Squash, a long-standing candidate finally admitted after repeated unsuccessful bids across previous cycles.
• Lacrosse in its six-a-side form, with deep roots in North America and a compressed format built for broadcast windows.