American Ninja Warrior | HD | 2023 | Season 15 | Episode 1 | Los Angeles Qualifiers 1 & 2

The fifteenth season of the American game show television series American Ninja Warrior premiered on June 5, 2023, on NBC. A spin-off from the Japanese reality series Sasuke, it is hosted by Matt Iseman, Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, and Zuri Hall. The series was officially announced by NBC in late March, though the applications were being accepted from November 19, 2022, until December 16, 2022. The full list of competitors was published on March 15, 2023. Filming for qualifiers moved to Los Angeles, California, where the semifinals remained. Filming for national finals remained in Las Vegas, Nevada. Filming for the season began on March 15, 2023 and wrapped in early May 2023. Major changes are made for this season: - The age limit was officially reduced to 15 years old and older, meaning teenagers were no longer invited; they could just apply. - Both the Qualifiers & Semifinals were filmed in Los Angeles, between March 15th and April 2nd, rather than in separate cities like the previous two seasons. - 30 competitors in every Qualifier; the top 12 men and top 4 women will advance to Semifinals. - Competitors ranked #12 and #13 (#4 and #5 in the women’s leaderboard) will race on the NvN course for the last two Semifinal spots, however, they stop after the fourth obstacle. - Split Decision was removed from both Qualifiers & Semifinals. - Semifinals are done in a Ninja vs. Ninja style format; grouping two qualifiers together for a Semifinal seeded by placement (e.g. #1 vs. #24 or #1 vs. #8) for both the competing men & women respectively. - As a drastic drop, there are only six obstacles used for the Semifinals as opposed to ten since previously established in American Ninja Warrior 5. - The winners of each race will move on, plus the top 2 non-finishers of each semifinal. - A new format was introduced for the Las Vegas National Finals, where the First Stage would have the top 24 competitors advance, however, should the amount of clears be an odd number over 24, they will take an extra competitor in because... - The Second Stage is now head-to-head, where every winner plus the top two non-winners advance to Stage 3, guaranteeing a minimum of 14 competitors. - In addition, two seasons were filmed back-to-back during the filming period, but on separate time periods (e.g. Qualifiers were filmed for season 15 and then 16).