Follow us on Google Discover A Super Bowl repeat may open the 2026 season on Wednesday, but a lot of the attention is being placed on the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers’ game in Melbourne, Australia, on Thursday.
The game will mark the very first regular season game to take place in Australia, with the Melbourne Cricket Ground the obvious host stadium.
Although the stadium is clearly not designed to host NFL games, adaptations have taken place behind the scenes in preparation for the Rams and Niners.
One of the biggest adaptations is the field, with the game being played on an oval cricket pitch, which has created huge spaces from the sidelines to the stands.
The footage from inside the stadium is interesting, to say the very least.
Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
Standard tickets for the game in Melbourne have now officially sold out, but fans are able to purchase them from the resale market.
The view from the stands is going to be questionable, given the rectangle NFL field being dropped onto the cricket oval.
A standard NFL field is 120 yards long including the end zones and 53⅓ yards wide.
Think of a standard NFL field (120 yards long including end zones, 53⅓ yards wide). Now drop that entire rectangle into the middle of the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s playing oval.
The MCG surface runs about 190 yards long and 163 yards wide. That means the oval is roughly… https://t.co/808glddSCb
— FrontRowBrian™ 🇺🇸 ₿ (@FrontRowBrian) September 7, 2026
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To put this into perspective, the MCG’s pitch is 190 yards long and 163 yards wide, which has created a huge gap from the field to the stands.
It will be interesting to see how this comes across on the broadcast footage on Thursday evening.
The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London has received a lot of praise over the years for how well it accommodates NFL football.
The stadium in north London looks like an actual NFL stadium on the broadcast, but this may not quite be the case for the MCG, as impressive a stadium it may well be.
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