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Tickets sold out in just hours. Now, two of the world’s greatest cities for pros and their fans are ready to create an intercontinental superpower of sports. Next week on Sept. 11, the LA Rams will play the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia — a first ever for the team, which made a multi-year deal to bring the NFL to the city’s iconic MCG stadium (future matchups to be announced).
New York may have the most professional sports teams in the country — but LA is a close second with 12 major league professional teams in the city. It’s a sporting prowess that it shares with Melbourne, which is packed with arch-athletic events from Formula 1 and Grand Slam tennis to local favorites like Australia Rules Football (AFL) and cricket.
Further connecting the two cities is a recently launched direct flight with Delta on its long-haul Airbus A350 aircraft — which they’ve loaded with premium seats, including 40 Delta One suites. Currently, Australia is the fourth-biggest overseas source market for Los Angeles (after China, the UK and Japan) with 294,000 Australians making the Pacific puddle jump in 2025.
For New Yorkers, a new direct flight from the Big Apple to the Sydney (see sidebar) will also improve access to the Sportsville of the Southern Hemisphere.
Not only is the NFL hoping it will get sports-obsessed Aussies hooked on the pig skin, Australian authorities are counting on Americans looking into their slightly curious domestic games.
One year ago, Snoop Dogg appeared at the AFL Grand Finale — the Super Bowl of the Land Down Under. The multipurpose Melbourne Cricket Ground throbbed with 100,000 fans, delivering an energetic event designed to charm Yanks, whether they understand the rules of not.
Then, last December, Rory Mcilroy got golf fans going gaga at the Australian Open Golf tournament at the Royal Melbourne Golf Course. He may have slipped on a banana peel, literally, and lost to Norwegian putter Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, but the top golfer had all eyes on Melbourne. In January, the stars of tennis return for the Australian Open — which has one of the best grounds and atmospheres on the circuit, while local hero Oscar Piastri will race for a shot at championship honors at the Melbourne Formula Grand Prix with McLaren.
For cricket fans, Melbourne’s MCG is as hollowed as Yankees Stadium or Fenway Park — and just as Aussies love checking in on our national pastime when they’re stateside, Americans will want to check out baseball’s older cousin in person.
But right now all eyes are on the NFL.
“Probably a few years ago, you may not have thought this was a reality,” league executive Peter O’Reilly said in a release. “[Now, for] the commissioner, the 32 owners, there’s a commitment to become a true global sport property. That means expanding our footprint. That means going to different parts of the world and exposing more fans, in this case fans in Australia and Melbourne, to our great sport.”
