The 49ers and Rams play the first NFL regular-season game in Australia on Thursday night, from the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Major League Baseball got there first. It hasn't been back since 2014.
How to watch
49ers vs. Rams — NFL Week 1
Thursday, Sept. 10 — 8:35 p.m. ET / 5:35 p.m. PT
Friday, Sept. 11 — 10:35 a.m. local in Melbourne
Melbourne Cricket Ground
Streaming: Netflix, exclusively. Pregame coverage starts at 6:30 p.m. ET.
Local TV: NBC Bay Area in San Francisco, KNBC in Los Angeles.
Mobile: NFL+ on phones and tablets.
International: NFL Game Pass on DAZN.
Radio: KSFO 810 AM and KSAN 107.7 FM in the Bay Area. ESPN LA 710 AM and 93.1 Jack FM in Los Angeles. Westwood One nationally.
About that Netflix free trial
"Netflix free trial" is one of the fastest-rising searches of the last hour. There isn't one.
Netflix discontinued free trials in the United States in 2020 and hasn't brought them back. If you don't have an account, the cheapest way in is the ad-supported tier, currently the entry-level plan, billed monthly and cancellable any time.
If you're in the Bay Area or Los Angeles, the local NBC affiliate is carrying it over the air — an antenna gets you the game for free.
The travel argument that ate the week
The two teams did opposite things and American sports media has talked about almost nothing else.
San Francisco flew in eight days early, with acclimation packets and a plan to live on Melbourne time. Some players went to an AFL final. By most accounts they've been adopted as the home team, despite the Rams being the reason the game exists.
Los Angeles landed Thursday morning, roughly 24 hours before kickoff, and intends to stay on Pacific time — sleep at 6 p.m. local, wake at 2 or 3 a.m., play at 10:35 a.m., fly home that night. Rams linebacker Byron Young described the Qantas A380 with lie-flat seats as "bougie." Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay both said they slept fine.
Nick Wright pointed out the Rams will spend 36 of 60 hours on a plane.
Bill Simmons called it the number one storyline of the year and said he'd been told San Francisco wins the game and is wrecked for two months, while Los Angeles loses and is fine.
Sports physician Jesse Morse said the data suggests ten days to acclimate, seven is workable, and what the Rams are attempting is "a crazy, extreme stress" on the circadian rhythm. He noted they tried the same thing in London last year and beat Jacksonville — but London is a shorter flight in the opposite direction.
Cole Anthony, the former NBA guard now signed with Melbourne United, put it more plainly to Nine: the Rams' plan doesn't make sense to him, and the turnaround is too quick.
Baseball did this in 2014
The Dodgers and Diamondbacks opened the 2014 season with two games at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
MLB went all in. Adam Goodes, the AFL star and Australian of the Year, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Clayton Kershaw and Paul Goldschmidt met Goodes, Alessandro Del Piero and Sonny Bill Williams at the ground. Kershaw got a birthday cake. Dodgers players took Little Leaguers to Bondi Beach.
Then baseball left and never went back.
Why it hasn't returned
The math is closer than it looks.
One NFL game is a seventeenth of a regular season. Nine MLB games is an eighteenth. The proportional burden of a two-week Australian swing is roughly what the NFL just asked two teams to absorb in a single week.
The difference is what surrounds it. MLB plays every day. There's no bye to hide the recovery in, and the league has spent the last several years restructuring its schedule specifically to cut travel — more balanced opponents, longer stays in a city, fewer coast-to-coast turnarounds. Going to Australia runs against everything that redesign was for.
What baseball would find there now
More than it did in 2014.
Travis Bazzana became the first Australian ever drafted first overall in 2024, out of Oregon State by way of Turramurra High in Sydney. He made his major league debut for Cleveland on April 28 — it aired on ESPN2 across the Pacific Rim — and he's been an All-Star with 11 home runs and 18 stolen bases. Last week he hit a walk-off single against Detroit and screamed "I f&^king do this sht!" into the camera.
His father tells a story about the two bags Bazzana took to the Sydney airport in 2021, plus a third with five pounds of Tim Tams and three cans of Milo. And about the red notebook of hitting strategies, and the cardboard on his bedroom wall where he wrote down goals — bench this much, run a 60 in under seven seconds, because that's the major league average.
The Australian Baseball League opens its 2026-27 season on Nov. 19 under a restructured model with 2027 expansion in view. The Adelaide Giants won last season's title, their third in four years, with Phillies and Reds prospects on the field.
And at the World Baseball Classic in March, Australia went 2-2 in Pool C and finished in a three-way tie with South Korea and Chinese Taipei. Head-to-head didn't separate them, so it went to the second tiebreaker — runs allowed per defensive out. Korea beat Australia 7-2. A four-run margin instead of five and Australia advances to the quarterfinals.
They lost a World Baseball Classic berth by one run.
Thursday night
Kickoff is 8:35 p.m. ET on Netflix. The MCG holds just over 100,000.
The last time an American league went to Australia and made a spectacle of it, the Dodgers were at Bondi Beach with a bunch of kids in Little League uniforms, and it was the last thing baseball did there.
Travel details via Nine. Bazzana family quotes via MLB.com. Schedule via the NFL and ABL.