The NFL’s never-ending quest to become a global sport will continue in 2026 with the boldest international game the league has ever floated: A regular season game in Melbourne, Australia.
The NFL having a regular season game in Australia is monumentally stupid
Who thought this was a good idea?
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
There’s no question that one of the world’s great sporting cities deserves to host an NFL game — but there are questions surrounding this endeavor which indicate that nobody spent any time thinking this through.
All we know as far as details are that the Rams will be the “home” team in the matchup, and that it will be a part of the regular season.
It’s going to be a spectacle, to be certain. The game itself will be held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), one of the world’s largest and most iconic venues with the ability to hold over 100,000 fans. The game will likely be a sellout, and attract major attention inside Australia, which is the plan, but there are mammoth hurdles the league hasn’t explained yet.
No. 1: The time difference
It’s one thing to hold NFL games in Europe with a six or seven hour time difference, but Australia is 19 HOURS ahead of Los Angeles, and 16 hours ahead of the East Coast. If we assume it will be a night game under the lights then a 7 p.m. kickoff local time in Melbourne will be midnight on the West Coast, or 3 a.m. ET.
The most logical would be a mid-afternoon game locally, which would result in a Saturday Night game in the USA — but TV scheduling is only the smallest element of all this.
No. 2: Jet lag
It’s generally accepted that it takes approximately one day, per time zone crossed to fully acclimate to jet lag. This is why teams fly out to England and Germany a few days in advance ahead of their games, so players are able to adjust.
Australia is SEVEN time zones apart from the west coast. As someone who makes the trip from the United States to Australia on a semi-regular basis it doesn’t take quite a full week to feel normal again, but easily 4-5 days to get used to the massive shift.
This occurs both ways, and it’s unclear how the NFL expects players to be in peak physical condition when their sleep patterns are completely altered like this. It wouldn’t matter in a preseason scenario when starters barely play anyway, but when every game matters this is a weird choice.
No. 3: How are they getting there?
The majority of NFL teams fly on Boeing 777 and Boeing 737 widebody airplanes, with custom interior modifications to transform the interior from having over 200 commercial seats, to 50 pod configurations for players to stretch out, with additional seating for support staff.
The issue is that neither the 777, nor the 737 can make the 7,900 mile flight to Melbourne. Even with a logical layover in Hawaii they can’t make the second leg of the flight. In the past when exhibition games have been played in Australia players have taken multiple flights, but that ruins the pregame preparation flow that teams are used to, which is an issue when it comes to a regular season game.
Essentially this will require either teams finding entirely new aircraft to be custom fit for them to make a flight this far, or altering the way the leadup to the game is handled all together.
There’s a logical answer here the NFL hasn’t explored
Instead of trying to cram an NFL regular season game into the schedule and play it so many hours away in Australia, why not bring back the Pro Bowl and play that? The motivation for players would be the league footing the bill to fly entire families to Australia, creating a once-in-a-lifetime experience for NFL players, while football fans Down Under would get to see stars from multiple teams, not just those the league has decided to showcase.
There’s no great way to play a game so far away, but this ain’t it.
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