The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!

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NFL infuriates fans over early season game changes: ‘Un-American’

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BS BULLETIN:

  • NFL fans ripped the league for staging the Rams-49ers game in Melbourne, Australia, with the broadcast exclusively on Netflix.
  • Critics complained about everything from streaming access to the distant seating and subdued stadium atmosphere.
  • One reaction summed up the backlash by calling the arrangement “completely out of reach and un-American.”

The NFL spent decades turning Sunday football into an American institution. Now some fans would just like the league to keep a little more of the “American” part.

The NFL’s latest international experiment — sending the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers roughly 8,000 miles away to play at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia — produced plenty of grumbling back home.

And putting the game exclusively on Netflix didn’t exactly help.

The 49ers beat the Rams 27-7 Thursday night in the United States, while it was already Friday morning in Melbourne. OutKick collected reactions from fans who weren’t thrilled with either the location or the streaming arrangement.

One complaint captured the mood particularly well: “Absolute crazy work for the NFL to put this game in Australia and behind a Netflix paywall. Completely out of reach and un-American.”

Others complained that the enormous Melbourne Cricket Ground simply didn’t feel like an NFL stadium. The venue holds roughly 100,000 people, but its oval configuration puts many spectators far from the football field.

OutKick’s Zach Dean also noted the noticeable difference in crowd noise compared with an NFL game played in Seattle the night before. His conclusion was simple: Why does America’s overwhelmingly popular football league need to keep taking regular-season games out of America?

“Keep the NFL in America,” Dean wrote. “Enough of these international games.”

The NFL sees things differently. The league has increasingly used international games to expand its global audience, and Melbourne wasn’t exactly an attendance disaster. The game was sold out.

The NFL also incorporated its league-wide commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks into the event. U.S. Marines and members of the Australian Defence Force presented the colors before the game as the stadium observed the anniversary.

Commissioner Roger Goodell has said the league’s 9/11 commemorations are intended to remember the victims while honoring survivors, first responders, and military families. All Week 1 games are receiving commemorative elements.

So the NFL can certainly point to 100,000 occupied seats in Melbourne as evidence that taking American football abroad is working. The fans complaining from American living rooms have a different question: Who exactly is the NFL expanding for?

Because when an American regular-season game is being played on the other side of the planet and requires a Netflix subscription to watch it, some fans think the league may be getting a little too creative with the definition of “National.”

DBS WIRE SOURCES

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