MELBOURNE, Australia — NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday that the league’s first regular-season game in Australia exceeded its expectations, with roughly 100,000 fans expected at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for a Friday morning kickoff local time.
Goodell said on Netflix’s broadcast of the season opener between the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams that he has never met a culture that loves sports more.
“I think we always had a high expectation that this would be successful,” Goodell said. “This exceeded it in every way. Think about this: We’re on Friday at 10:30 in the morning and 100,000 people are going to be in a stadium watching an NFL game. That speaks volumes about the passion of these fans.”
Kickoff was set for 7:35 p.m. CT Thursday on Netflix, with the Rams as the designated home team. The state of Victoria and the NFL promoted the game on trams, buses, billboards, murals, and entire buildings across Melbourne. Flinders Street Station and City Hall carried moving light displays welcoming both teams.
The 2027 Conflict At The Melbourne Cricket Ground
The 100,000-seat MCG could be unavailable to the NFL at this time next year because of the Australian Football League postseason, which begins in early September. The AFL accommodated the NFL this year but does not intend to do the same in 2027, according to Australian media reports cited by the AP.
The AFL has pushed its entire 2027 season back a week and moved the Grand Final to October. The MCG is booked in early March for the 150th anniversary Ashes Test between Australia and England.
The NFL wants to be in Australia with games on a regular, annual basis, NFL executive vice president Peter O’Reilly said during a Sept. 2 conference call, the AP reported.
“We have great partners in the MCG and the AFL, and I know we’ll work to a good solution there that allows the NFL to continue to play in Australia on an ongoing basis,” O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly confirmed the league wants its Australia games in the first week of the regular season because of the travel involved. Teams take 15-hour flights from California to reach Melbourne, farther from the U.S. than any previous international game.
Nine of the AFL’s 18 teams are based in the Melbourne metropolitan area. Those clubs have played all of their home postseason matches at the MCG in recent years. The AFL plays nearly a quarter of its matches at the MCG, even with 56,000-seat Marvel Stadium less than three miles away, and it added a wild-card round of postseason games this year.
NFL’s Multi-Year Deal With Visit Victoria
The NFL opened an office in Australia in 2022. It has a multi-year deal with Visit Victoria, the state’s official tourism company, to stage games in Melbourne.
The league wants to keep playing games across the Australian market for years to come, said Charlotte Offord, the NFL’s general manager for Australia and New Zealand.
“Never say never in terms of where games could go in the future across Australia or even across wider APAC,” Offord said. “So certainly it’s not off the table in terms of where we could go, but this is a long-term commitment to the market, and we want to see us continue to be playing games across the market for years to come.”
The Rams were named the home team for the first Melbourne game in February 2025, when the NFL announced its multi-year commitment to the city. San Francisco was announced as the opponent in February 2026.
