{"id":576179,"date":"2026-04-10T16:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T16:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576179\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T16:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T16:02:07","slug":"roger-goodell-nfl-plans-to-play-in-australia-for-the-long-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576179\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Goodell: NFL plans to play in Australia “for the long term”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 10, the NFL will play its first-ever regular-season game in Australia (where it will be September 11 at kickoff). While it may be the first time the NFL plays a game that counts in the land of koalas and kookaburras, it apparently won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n

In a press conference at the location of the Week 1 49ers-Rams game in Melbourne, Commissioner Roger Goodell made it clear the NFL will be back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question that we\u2019re going to be playing here again<\/a>,\u201d Goodell said, via Reuters. \u201cOur view is that we\u2019re coming here for the long term. We don\u2019t come as a one-off. This isn\u2019t a circus.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it sort of is a circus. Because the circus typically comes to town once per year. While that may be enough to fill a stadium, it\u2019s not enough to fully monetize the product internationally.<\/p>\n

Look at England. The NFL has been playing regular-season games in London for 20 years. And the NFL is still struggling to get sustainable traction there.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s Week 1 Chiefs-Chargers game in Brazil \u2014 which was streamed globally at no cost by YouTube \u2014 had an international audience of 1.2 million<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The U.S. population is in the vicinity of 350 million. The rest of the world has 7.9 billion people. This means that only 0.015 percent of the rest of the planet watched the game.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not deterring the league from rolling the stone up a steep hill, even if some think the NFL should realize that it\u2019s not really working. And it won\u2019t work until international viewership improves, dramatically. That\u2019s where the real money is, as the NFL has learned in its domestic experience.<\/p>\n

And so Australia will now become a stop on the NFL\u2019s traveling non-circus circus. It could be an annual thing; asked whether the 2026 game means the NFL could be back in 2027, Goodell said, \u201cIt might.\u201d<\/p>\n

Might is the key word. In America, the NFL has plenty of it. It wants to get more of it beyond our borders. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s obviously a long-term play. The overriding question is how long it will take. And whether, at some point, it\u2019s going to hit a hard ceiling on how big it will be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On September 10, the NFL will play its first-ever regular-season game in Australia (where it will be September…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-576179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}