In December, Puck sports correspondent John Ourand reported that the NFL sent out requests for proposal to “a host of media companies and streamers” for the first-ever regular-season NFL game to be played in Australia as a one-off offer.
As they are wont to do, the league has changed its mind about how it wants to package that game.
Ourand is now reporting in his Varsity newsletter that the San Francisco 49ers-Los Angeles Rams game in Melbourne will be folded into a bundle.
“Despite strong interest from companies like Fox and YouTube, among others, it doesn’t look like the league is selling that game as a one-off anymore,” wrote Ourand. “Multiple sources have told me the NFL will now roll the rights to that Australia game into a package with four or five other games.”
It’s not hard to put two and two together and see it packaged with the four international games the league got back from NFL Network. And, as Ourand noted, a global streamer like Netflix, YouTube, or Prime Video seems like the most likely benefactor.
The going rate for international games is typically around $100 million, so it stands to reason that this package could go for well over $500 million in the upcoming round of negotiations.
Don’t expect to wait too long to find out who gets this international package. John Ourand reported last week that not only does the league want all of its new agreements in place before the season begins in September, but it also wants those deals to take effect immediately rather than wait until 2029. The league is in talks right now with CBS, which is expected to be the first domino falling toward Fox, NBC, ESPN, and the streamers.
