The NFL's Push Into Australia and Japan Makes No Sense—Until You Realize Who the Real Customer Is
Plus: Who Free Agent readers want to win the World Series between the Brewers and Rays
Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! It's a great day to pour a Miller Lite out.
Let's talk about the NFL invasion of Australia and, soon, Japan. Is it the real deal or is something else at play? Then we'll close with the results of our reader survey about the World Series.
Don't miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason.
Locker Room Links
- I cannot fathom how this was the best possible plan, but Game 6 of the WNBA Finals will take place at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday (9:30 a.m. for Californian fans of the Golden State Valkyries). It'll sell out, but how many will watch on TV?
- "The search for the best place to pee on an American golf course"
- President Donald Trump is campaigning with Johnny Manziel, Colt McCoy and Danny Amendola in Texas today. (It won't work, just like it doesn't work when Democrats campaign with Hollywood stars.)
- District court judge grants injunction against Trump's golf course renovation plans in Washington, D.C. (The Lorax reference was a bit much.)
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) got booed when he presented the winners trophy at the Formula 1 race in Austin, Texas. Local politicians presenting these trophies has always been my least favorite part of F1.
- After committing billions of dollars to a new football stadium, plus renovations for an arena and a baseball park, some D.C. politicians now wants taxpayers to spend $300 million on more seats and a roof for a soccer field that opened less than a decade ago.
- Elsewhere in Reason, we've got everything you need to know about the Texas Senate race: "Ken Paxton Survived Indictment, Impeachment, and Scandal. Can He Survive a Senate Race?" and "Will a Data Center Backlash Help James Talarico Turn Texas Blue?"
- If only more people had read a certain award-winning magazine cover story about the simple way to avoid government conflicts over pickleball courts!
Someone made a site that tracks what people are talking about at public city council meetings across the US.
The only thing discussed more than data centers?
Pickleball courts. pic.twitter.com/qyda81Tw1W
— Turner Novak 🍌🧢 (@TurnerNovak) October 26, 2026
The NFL's Push Into Australia and Japan Makes No Sense
Football in Europe is one thing—football in East Asia and Australia is another.
After the NFL played its first regular season game in Australia in Week 1, Commissioner Roger Goodell now says the league may double-down on working its way into East Asia and Australia. "Tokyo is clearly on our list, whether it's next year or the year after," Goodell told NFL Daily. "It's coming at some point in the near future." Another league administrator said they're considering a 10th international game next year, up from nine this year. The idea, one might think, is that by playing a game in Australia, Japan, or any other country, people with a tepid interest in the NFL become swarms of dedicated fans.
It won't work—at least not in the Eastern Hemisphere. The league is much too dedicated to the Eastern Time Zone for it to work. Consider the NFL's main kickoff times (the end of daylight saving time will soon alter these slightly).
Thursday Night Football: 8:15 p.m. Eastern, 9:15 a.m. Friday in Tokyo, 11:15 a.m. Friday in Sydney.
Sunday early afternoon: 1 p.m. Eastern, 2 a.m. Monday in Tokyo, 4 a.m. in Sydney.
Sunday late afternoon: 4:25 p.m. Eastern, 5:25 a.m. Monday in Tokyo, 7:25 a.m. in Sydney.
Sunday Night Football: 8:20 p.m. Eastern, 9:20 a.m. Monday in Tokyo, 11:20 a.m. in Sydney.
And so on for Monday Night Football.
Even the Super Bowl, the league's biggest event that we're always told is watched by millions of people in every country around the world, kicks off around 6:30 p.m. Eastern. That's 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning workday in Tokyo and 9:30 a.m. in Sydney. You'd have to be an American expat or an extremely dedicated foreign fan to watch—they exist, to be sure, but they're notable because they're a rarity (like my man @KoreaPistonsFan).
This is not like how American sports fans wake up on a weekend morning with nothing else going on and tune into European soccer matches—the NFL is hoping people will wake up in the middle of the night for an East Coast afternoon game, or tune in during their workdays for what we in the U.S. would consider a primetime matchup. (In Japan, watching every week appears to require an expensive subscription, whereas Australians at least seem to bundle many of the games into other packages like Disney+.)
Ask yourself: Are you frequently waking up at odd hours to watch the Australian Football League or J1 League soccer? Are you watching your favorite sports team in the middle of the workday? OK fine, if you work a flexible desk job like me, you might be tuning in for your baseball team's day games or throwing a golf major on your second screen. When I posted about this on X, people angrily responded that Japanese fans routinely watch baseball during the day—OK, fine, call me when the NFL gets its Shohei Ohtani.
But I'm not getting up at 2 a.m. to willingly start watching a sporting event, unless I'm studying abroad in London and the Tigers are in the playoffs for the second time in my life. While I don't miss a Formula 1 race, when they're on in the middle of the night I watch the next day—sometimes, but not always, without seeing any spoilers online.
The NFL will almost certainly sell out a game in Tokyo, but tickets aren't where the real money comes from, it's TV revenue they're chasing. That, and the 8:35 p.m. Eastern kickoff time for this season's Australia game (10:35 a.m. local, Friday), tell you who the real audience is.
It's you, my humble American friends.
The novelty of games in London and Germany is wearing off. The NFL thinks it can throw a game in Japan, sell it to Netflix for $100+ million, and then, most importantly, put it in primetime for the American East Coast.
The NFL might be hoping their football games in Australia and, soon, Japan, will create broader interest from those countries. What they're almost certainly more interested in is getting U.S. fans to watch another primetime game that the league can make hundreds of millions of dollars from in TV rights.
Readers Want a Brewers World Series Victory. Here's Why.
A lot of you must be pretty pleased with how baseball is going. About 70 percent of you said you're rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers, who now have a 3–0 lead in the World Series after battering the Tampa Bay Rays 10–1 on Monday night.
I, for one, am also rooting for the Brewers but had at least hoped for the teams to make it a little more interesting (at least Game 1 and Game 2 were close!). Both teams have managed to find pretty consistent success in recent seasons and "deserve" to be here, despite both being in fairly small markets and often up against more well-funded divisional opposition. Both, unfortunately, play in stadiums that are for some reason fully or partially owned by local government. But the Brewers, unlike the Rays, have good vibes, a great color scheme (I'm a sucker for navy–yellow/gold), and a strong fan base that deserves happiness.
The survey answers behind the Brewers were wide-ranging, from "The beer and cheese are better!" to "Beer. The answer is always beer." (Shoutout to whoever said "Channeling my inner Sarah Palin, I can see Milwaukee across Lake Michigan from my house in Grand Haven.") Several more said they are from Milwaukee, are from the Midwest, are just glad the Brewers beat the Dodgers, or think a "northern" team should win. A couple Red Sox fans chimed in to say they just hate the Rays.
The Rays, to be fair, might be seen as less objectionable because they have fewer fans to annoy everyone else with their success. No one, I assume, is climbing any street poles to celebrate if the Rays win the World Series (we may never know!). But we did get a few Tampa locals to chime in, and a couple Brewers haters, and one person who I sympathize with: "I have a dear friend who has been a Tampa Bay fan since the very beginning. She deserves a victory." Seems like she will be waiting at least one year longer.
The Brewers seem almost certain to be World Series champions going into what will likely be a brutal MLB lockout. Let us hope there are no games lost—any 2027 World Series champion is better than no champion, or season, at all.
Replay of the Week
Keep your eye on No. 5 car. Drivers don't usually go from 1st to 11th to 1st all in the span of one lap! (And since everyone turned out all right, you can also enjoy the carnage of this big crash.)
HOW DID KYLE LARSON PULL THIS OFF?!?! pic.twitter.com/nVhlg7JylD
— Rubbin is Racing (@rubbinisracing) October 25, 2026
That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the week while you skip the school Halloween party—it's Glendale at Salt River in the Arizona Fall League on Friday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern, where you can watch MLB test out a crazy new outfield rule.