Melbourne (AFP) – The growing popularity of American football in Australia will see the NFL play a regular-season game there for the first time when a sellout crowd packs into the 100,000-capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground. The Los Angeles Rams are nominally the home team on Friday when they face the San Francisco 49ers in the second match of the new NFL season, which kicks off this week. Tickets at the cavernous MCG were snapped up within minutes, echoing the interest the NFL has enjoyed when staging games in other overseas markets.
This year the league will play in seven countries across four continents in an unprecedented global schedule. Australia — a sports-mad nation of 28 million people — is the latest added to the slate, the league saying the country has 6.6 million NFL fans. The apparent growing interest is driven by the popularity of flag football — a fast-paced, five-a-side, non-contact version of the game. Boosted by its inclusion in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and potentially the Brisbane Games four years later, flag football is now played in 500 Australian schools, up from 10 in 2022 when a pilot programme was launched.
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“Australia has emerged as one of the most exciting growth markets for flag football globally,” Charlotte Offord, the NFL’s general manager for Australia and New Zealand, said. Offord was speaking last month after the NFL teamed up with American Football Australia (AFA) to expand its national schools programme further as part of a grassroots initiative to boost the game internationally. Australia is seen as a significant overseas market for the NFL. Since 2024 the Gold Coast has been home to an NFL academy with a growing number of Australians making their mark, led by the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jordan Mailata, Michael Dickson (Seattle Seahawks) and Cameron Johnston (Pittsburgh Steelers).
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said this week’s game was part of their long-term strategy for Australia, despite the logistical challenges and 17-hour time difference to the US West Coast. “Our view is that we’re coming here for the long-term. We don’t come as a one-off, this isn’t a circus,” he said. “This is something that’s an investment in this market and we believe that this is long-term and will be great for the NFL long-term.” Every ticket that we put out for public sale was gone in a matter of minutes,” he added. “I think that’s a demonstration of the demand for this event.”
To cater for a prime-time audience in the United States, the game will kick off at 10:35 am in Australia, which is Thursday evening in the US. The Rams, who are one of the title favourites, and 49ers have taken vastly different approaches to being ready. The 49ers arrived late last week to give themselves time to acclimatise, but the Rams are only due to touch down 24 hours before kick off in a bid to stay as close as possible to West Coast time and avoid jet lag. Speaking in Australia this week, San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan had a bit of fun with it all. “We’re a little confused…when I look at my clock and it says a time and then I try to see my family’s time and then it says the time, but it says yesterday,” he said. “I don’t even get how that’s possible, so I feel like I’m in the future.”
The NFL’s touchdown is a massive boost for Melbourne — considered the sporting capital of Australia — and kickstarts a host of big events in the city over the next six months. The MCG will host a sold-out Australian Rules Grand Final before the Melbourne Cup horse race, Australian Open golf and the traditional Boxing Day cricket Test. That is followed days later by the Australian Open tennis Grand Slam, a Formula One race and the 150th anniversary Test between Australia and England. “Major events like the NFL are economic powerhouses -– they fill our hotels, support our jobs and put Victoria on the world stage,” said state minister for major events Anthony Carbines.
© 2024 AFP
