{"id":891891,"date":"2026-09-14T16:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/891891\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T16:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:50:14","slug":"melbourne-chases-nba-mlb-nhl-after-nfl-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/891891\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne chases NBA, MLB, NHL after NFL success"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visit Victoria CEO Brendan McClements expressed \u201chopes of bringing US basketball, baseball and ice hockey to Melbourne — and more NFL action\u201d following the success<\/a> of Thursday\u2019s Rams-49ers game at Melbourne Cricket Ground, according to Peter Rolfe of the Melbourne HERALD SUN. Melbourne has previously staged an NHL exhibition game and the Pelicans last year became the \u201cfirst NBA team to play a match down under<\/a> outside the regular season.\u201d Experts said that the NFL\u2019s \u201cbold move\u201d to play a regular season game in Melbourne would \u201chave global leagues taking note.\u201d When asked if successfully staging the NFL game at the MCG<\/a> \u201ccould be the catalyst\u201d for more U.S. sports in Melbourne, McClements said \u201cdefinitely.\u201d Rolfe noted Victoria is \u201cguaranteed at least one more NFL match in the next three years,\u201d but it is \u201choped a longer term deal can be struck in the wake of the smash success of the first Melbourne match.\u201d NFL Australia and NZ GM Charlotte Offord said that she \u201cwould not be surprised to see other US leagues follow their lead.\u201d She said, \u201cThe NBA obviously came out last year and put on a really good show here, it was a fabulous event. But regular season games are meaningful\u201d (Melbourne HERALD SUN, 9\/13<\/a>).<\/p>\n

DOWN UNDER: In Sydney, Peter FitzSimons wrote the \u201ccarry-on about the NFL being in Melbourne is just embarrassing.\u201d FitzSimons: \u201cAustralian rules, rugby league and rugby union are much better games than American football, both to play and to watch. \u2026 It\u2019s fine that the NFL is here for a visit as a cultural curiosity. But the game should never take hold here\u201d (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 9\/12<\/a>).<\/p>\n

NOT-SO-GOOD IMPRESSION: In Boston, Ben Volin wrote privately, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league are \u201cprobably a little miffed that the Rams played so poorly.\u201d Thursday\u2019s Australia game was \u201creally an experiment to see how feasible it is to play games on the other side of the Pacific.\u201d Volin: \u201cA Rams win, or even just a crisper performance, would have given the NFL all the ammo it needs to start scheduling games more regularly in Asia, even midseason.\u201d Volin: \u201cThe NFL is still going to schedule more games in Asia anyway. \u2026 But the Rams\u2019 poor performance will probably make the league proceed a bit more cautiously instead of diving right in\u201d (BOSTON GLOBE, 9\/12<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visit Victoria CEO Brendan McClements expressed \u201chopes of bringing US basketball, baseball and ice hockey to Melbourne —…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,4034,726,596,3915,591,590,593,575,85],"class_list":["post-891891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baseball","tag-basketball","tag-football","tag-hockey","tag-mlb","tag-nba","tag-nfl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}