In the past, the NFL sold the Week 1 international game on a one-off basis. This year, that’s changing.
John Ourand of _Puck_ reports in the latest edition of his _Varsity_ newsletter that the 49ers-Rams game in Melbourne has been [folded into a package](https://puck.news/newsletters/the-varsity/?utm_campaign=The+Varsity+-+SUBSCRIBERS+%283%2F12%2F26%29&utm_content=The+Varsity+-+SUBSCRIBERS+%283%2F12%2F26%29&utm_medium=email_action&utm_source=customer.io&utm_term=f6c6060e9bb201bc831b) of five or six total games.
Per Ourand, Fox and YouTube were interested in the Melbourne game. Now, whoever gets it will be buying other games, too.
As Ourand surmises, the four international games that flowed back to the NFL as part of the ESPN merger presumably will be included in the new package. The possible (which is more fairly termed “likely”) Thanksgiving Eve game could be part of it, too.
It could result in a payday landing somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, over and above the billions the NFL will receive from its existing broadcast-rights packages.
The package is being sold at a time when the league is believed to be negotiating an extension of the broader deal with CBS, with the possible plan to move on to Fox and the other companies that currently hold the rights to the existing windows.
The NFL plans to play the Melbourne game on either Wednesday, September 9, or Thursday, September 10, with the Seahawks’ home opener landing on the other day.
Then there’s the question of whether the NFL will find another new standalone window or two. Christmas Eve is surely already in play this year, since it lands on a Thursday. How about Christmas Eve Eve? Or another stray Wednesday — like, say, Wednesday, November 11 (Veterans Day)?
The league is looking for more and more ways to stuff cheese into its 11-figure pizza. Mark Cuban once said of the NFL appetite for expanding into more nights of the week, “[Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/mark-cuban-warns-nfl-hogs-risk-eventual-implosion).”
The more accurate phrase seems to be this: Pigs get fat, hogs get fatter, whales get fattest.