Camryn Bynum Has Big Dreams For Flag Football in the Philippines
Annika Caniza • Published March 13, 2025 • The Game
Flag football in the Philippines is about to get much bigger thanks to a couple of big developments on the horizon.
Flag football could be the next big sport for Filipinos.
Take it from Camryn Bynum, the Filipino-American NFL star who just recently announced his move from Minnesota to the Indianapolis Colts: “I know Filipinos will be some of the best flag football players if we just start young,” he tells The GAME. “We’re fast, we’re agile. We’re not the biggest, but in flag football, you don’t have to be big at all.”
The burgeoning flag football community in the Philippines is enough to show truth in Camryn’s statement. Over the past few years, flag football has been growing exponentially among Filipinos, with clubs, teams, and leagues popping up all around the country.
On top of this, the NFL star himself has also set up multiple training camps in the Philippines (a series he calls ‘CampBeezy’ which has had three successful volumes so far) and through these programs, he has witnessed the flag football craze first-hand, getting to meet all kinds of players — from those who have been into the sport for decades to those who are just learning the ropes.
Seeing how it has exploded, Camryn believes that there is even more potential for the sport to grow even further.
“The biggest issue that I saw here with American football overall, that there’s so many people that love football and want to learn it, but there’s really no platform for them to play on, not enough places to play,” he shares.
This is also what Camryn explained when he first sat down with Anthony Raymond, the COO of RIESA Management, Inc. to discuss a long-term partnership that could help the Philippine Flag Football Team’s Olympic journey.
Camryn reveals, “I told him my vision of growing American football here in the Philippines, and really [Anthony] was like, ‘Let’s do it, whatever way I can help.’”
A partnership built from passion
Anthony Raymond is proof that the seeds of flag football’s rise had been planted long ago. As someone who grew up playing American football, he recalls, “When I came back [to the Philippines after college], I joined a flag football league here. And this is in 2002, I think. And it was fantastic. It was phenomenal. Not too many people knew about it, but I met a lot of my friends through it.”
Back then, flag football was more of a weekend pickup game, a way to spend time with friends and enjoy the game.
Today, flag football is so much more than this. Not only does the Philippines have many more teams, but the country even has its own national flag football team, which made its international debut at the 2023 IFAF Men’s Asia Oceania Flag Football Championship.
Thus, it felt serendipitous that when Anthony, the COO of a locally-grown service hospitality company, was searching for opportunities to support Philippine sports, he came across Camryn’s project, CampBeezy.
Anthony invited Camryn Bynum and his family for a casual dinner to talk more about the opportunities for flag football in the Philippines. From there, a new partnership between the Bynum Faith Foundation, the NFL star’s organization, and RIESA Management, Inc. was born.
The main motivation for their partnership is simple. In Anthony’s words: “We want to expand flag football.”
Already, they are putting the wheels in motion together.
Camryn already hosted his first camp of the year, the CampBeezy Elite, which brought together 75 elite flag football players from five Asian countries to experience a simulation of a week in the life of an NFL player. Over the course of three days, the participants got to train with professional coaches, analyze real NFL games (including Camryn’s own performances, which they nitpicked together), and got to experience world-class physical therapy.
“We had to really treat it as if they’re elite athletes and they’re world-class athletes because that’s the goal of everybody there,” the California native explains.
This was his way of sharing his knowledge as a professional playing at the highest level of the sport — and he hopes to continue doing this.
Later this year, in partnership with RIESA Management, the Bynum Faith Foundation will be hosting its fourth camp: CampBeezy Vol. 4.
“My main goal is for people to just continue to come to learn. I think that’s what makes this camp special and what we’re doing special,” Camryn shares. “Whoever is attending these camps, they come to the camp, and I want them to be able to go back and teach exactly what we were able to teach. And now all the knowledge is spreading.”
Camryn and Anthony, now working in tandem, believe that the Philippines can be competitive against the big flag football countries around the world, and to help reach that potential, they are looking at a long-term partnership that could trickle down to the grassroots level.
The power of sports
Camryn Bynum is very hands-on with the flag football events put together with his organization, the Bynum Faith Foundation. At every step of the way, from the planning to the execution of his training camps, the Colts player is a part of the process simply because this is a cause close to his heart.
“The only reason I was able to go to college was because of football. I was able to get a full-ride scholarship to play football,” he reflects. “So that was my way of getting to college and I don’t think enough people realize that. So through this camp, I just want to educate people on sports and how much sports can change your life also.”
With this as his motivation to spread the gospel of flag football to Filipinos, Camryn, as well as RIESA Management, hope to expand their programs to the youth level.
As he asserts, “We have the exact same talent and talent level and potential as we do in the US over here. We just have to teach it from a young age and grow.
“So, we teach kids younger and younger. Now, they can grow up their whole life. And now, college scholarships could become an option, especially with flag football growing. More schools worldwide are starting to have sports and have flag football in there…
“I really just want to help people learn about football and create opportunities for people to take sports further than just a hobby, like it did for me.”
Anthony shares the same sentiment. Now a supporter of flag football in the Philippines, his aspiration is to help Camryn’s group develop more youth programs and opportunities for kids to get into flag football.
Speaking on the importance of the sustainability of their programs, Anthony explains, “We want to not just do these camps during the summer, but figure out how can we sustain a program where it could be an afterschool activity?”
Both Camryn and Anthony share a clear vision: they both want flag football to not just be a weekend hobby. More than this, they want the sport to grow to a point where it becomes an opportunity for Filipinos to actually compete.
And the opportunities now are boundless — especially with the sport’s inclusion in the upcoming LA 2028 Olympics.
A big opportunity ahead
Flag football is officially becoming an Olympic sport. The Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games will mark the first time that this sport will be included in the Olympics, which underscores its growth on a global scale.
“The game is going worldwide,” Camryn Bynum says with a proud smile. “I think a lot of opportunities are going to come out of this…I think it’s going to be eventually an endless world of possibilities that this sport can open up for people and just sports overall.”
Flag football’s inclusion at the biggest sporting event in the world is yet another motivation for Camryn and Anthony to continue growing the sport on a local level. With a national team already set up, right now, it is just about creating more opportunities for them to develop.
As Camryn explains, “People don’t have enough places or ways to compete to get better, and that’s the only way you can get better. Training and everything, lifting weights, running — that can do so much. But until you’re out there competing with other people, that’s when you really grow and be able to, be taken seriously as a new sport here in the Philippines. So that’s the whole goal is to just continue to create more opportunities for the community to play football.”
His recent CampBeezy Elite program was a step in the right direction. By creating an environment that brought together talents from all over the region, Filipino players got a taste of what it’s like to compete against other teams, as well as what it’s like to train like a professional athlete.
With passionate athletes in high supply, right now, it is all about raising the standards and opening up more opportunities to compete.
“For me, I have an insane amount of confidence that the Philippines will be in the Olympics for flag football,” Camryn claims. “And I want to be able to build that for more than just the Philippines.”
Now partnered with an organization equally as passionate about flag football, Camryn Bynum is taking the sport, and the country’s die-hard athletes, to the next level.
