On Wednesday it was announced that the NFL will be playing a regular season game in Melbourne, Australia in 2026. The Los Angeles Rams will be the home team for this game. As for who they’ll play, it could wind up being the Detroit Lions.
The Rams are scheduled to host an NFC North team that season and the Lions could be that team. Here’s how it could go down. The Rams and Lions need to finish in the same place in their respective divisions in 2025. So if the Lions win the NFC North and the Rams win the NFC West in 2025, they’ll play each other in 2026.
From there it’s going to come down to who the league chooses to go to Australia. At this point, only two teams have marketing rights there and that’s the Rams and Eagles.
That shouldn’t make too much of a difference as the NFL has been sending some teams without marketing rights in certain countries to those countries. That and the Lions just got rights to four different countries last March. Australia could definitely add more.
Obviously Lions fans aren’t too keen on international games, but it’s only a matter of time before their popularity brings them out of the country. At this point, the countries that make the most sense are Germany because of Amon-Ra St. Brown and Canada because of the proximity to the country and the large amount of Lions fans there.