Football fans around the world will have their eyes trained on Green Bay, Wisconsin this week for the 2025 NFL Draft. The cream of the crop of college stars will find out where they will start their professional careers ahead of the upcoming season.
Amid all the noise, fans also heard from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell during an interview on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ on Friday. Goodell revealed a new host city that will be added to the schedule in 2026; Australia.
“We’re starting the season off over there next year,” Goodell explained, building on comments from the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning, Mike North. Speaking recently, North had outlined a potential solution for the huge time zone difference between the United States and Australia.
“The way I understand it is, to play in prime time, here in the states on the East Coast, you’re actually playing the following morning (in Australia) local time,” he explained. “Something like 10:15am kickoff (in Australia) for an 8:15pm kickoff the night before here in the states.”
It hasn’t yet been confirmed whether or not the NFL will go ahead with that morning kickoff time to suit US audiences. It would make sense from a commercial point of view and could offer an intriguing start to the NFL weekend. However the teams involved may baulk at the idea of a morning kickoff, followed by a major time zone change for their second game of the season.
To combat that, it looks like the Week 1 game in Australia could be held on a Wednesday or Thursday to allow the teams greater chance to recover from the lengthy flight and readapt to the US timings.
“Because it is Week 1, you know they’re playing again in Week 2, so you don’t want to shorten that week,” North continued. “I suspect it will probably be early in the week, more like a Thursday, maybe even a Wednesdaythat’s a possibility that we’ve discussed.”
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