The Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers will meet at the famed Melbourne Cricket Ground next week in what the NFL intends to be the first of many regular-season games in front of its growing Australian fan base.
The league also is determined to play those games at Australia's biggest stadium during the first week of the NFL's regular season — even with a major scheduling problem obstructing that goal in 2027.
The 100,000-seat MCG could be unavailable
to the NFL at this time next year because it will be occupied by the Australian Football League postseason, which begins in early September. The AFL accommodated the NFL this year, but doesn't intend to do the same in 2027, according to Australian media reports.
Without going into details, NFL executive vice president Peter O'Reilly downplayed the potential for disruption caused by this scheduling conflict during a conference call Wednesday to highlight the league's upcoming Australian debut.
“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.
The entire 2027 AFL season has been pushed back a week, with the postseason-ending AFL Grand Final at the MCG moved to October, because the arena is booked in early March for a landmark cricket test match — the 150th anniversary Ashes between Australia and England.
O’Reilly confirmed the NFL wants its Australia games to happen in the first week of its regular season because of the major travel commitment involved. The Melbourne game is farther from the U.S. than any previous international game, with the teams required to take 15-hour flights from California.
The NFL also wants to play in the MCG, Australia's premier venue and the largest stadium on the NFL schedule this season. The 49ers-Rams matchup appears to be on the verge of being a complete sellout.
But the 172-year-old MCG is vital to the AFL, which added a wild-card round of postseason games this year.
Nine of the AFL’s 18 current teams are based in the Melbourne metropolitan area, and those clubs' postseason home matches have all been played at the MCG in recent years. The AFL plays nearly a quarter of its total matches at the MCG — even with the 56,000-seat Marvel Stadium, which also hosts many regular-season AFL matches, less than three miles away.
O'Reilly didn't go into the potential solutions to the distant scheduling problem while touting the excitement of the NFL's first game in Australia and the promise of many more.
“This is not the circus coming to town,” O’Reilly said. “This is not just us coming for one game. This is part of a long-term commitment to Australia and the region of bringing games (and) year-round activation. ... We want to be there with games on a regular, annual basis. We see it as a long-haul partnership, for sure.”
The NFL opened an office in Australia in 2022, and it has a multi-year deal with Visit Victoria, the official state tourism company, to stage games in Melbourne.
Charlotte Offord, the NFL general manager for Australia and New Zealand, didn’t rule out the possibility for future NFL games to be played elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.
“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.”
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