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Winter in Melbourne was awful. The weather unremitting: cost of living, deadly potholes, local shops firebombed, local gyms firebombed, teenagers stabbing each other.
But unexpectedly, a burst of joy. The three-hour, 10.35am Friday NFL match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers last week had it all. Grand spectacle, folly (courtesy of the LA Rams attempts to defy jet lag) and something we have been missing for a while – jubilance.
I didn’t attend the match nor understand what was going on. And for me, the real pleasure was not the onfield clash of titans but in the stuff that surrounded it.
I owe thanks to a bunch of US sports writers (plus at least $30 million of taxpayer money) to blast away my jadedness about Melbourne and appreciate its pleasures anew.
I know that genuflecting to foreign arrivals is uncool, verging on pathetic. We Australian journalists have been doing this shamelessly ever since 1961 Hollywood star Vivien Leigh, fresh off the plane at Sydney Airport, was asked by the press corp what she thought about Australia. Before she had even left the terminal.
Her famously arch response was: “I don’t know. You are standing in the way.”
Last week it was San Francisco 49ers chief executive Al Guido smoothly telling me how “starstruck” he was arriving at the MCG. Yes, this made me happy.
And I wouldn’t be the only one who looked upon their city anew after a crack squad of US football reporters arrived a week early alongside the 49ers and got among it, listing the CBD cafes they loved, posting snaps of their big brekkies.
David Lombardi, of The San Francisco Standard, even taught a few Melburnians a thing or two as he looked out at the MCG from Princes Bridge, noting the City of Melbourne motto was “We gather strength as we go”. Who knew that? We all do now.
Even the highest powers were not immune.
“Prayer the winning strategy as NFL makes its Australian debut,” proclaimed the newsletter of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.
“Ahead of their Friday morning clash, a group of players from the San Francisco 49ers joined Melbourne’s Archbishop Peter A Comensoli for a pre-game celebration of the Eucharist. The Mass was organised through the team’s coaching staff and allowed players like star running back Christian McCaffrey, a Catholic, to partake in a different kind of preparation before the big game,” the newsletter reported. And you thought queues of 200 people outside the NFL pop-up shop on Bourke Street was the real story.
All appropriate deference to Him, but the real star of the show was Grant Cohn, who covers the 49ers on SI.com. He posted on every aspect of his Melbourne visit. His lunchtime sausage roll and an iced coffee at 7-11. How to eat Vegemite on toast (a little bit of spread and a lot of butter). His honest assessment? “Pungent, definitely not Nutella.”
Fans include Victoria’s newish Major Events Minister Anthony Carbines, who took over from Steve Dimopoulos. And the AFL, which promptly hired him.
There are lessons here for local journalists, about energy, intensity, but also in the foregrounding of daily pleasures that we treat nonchalantly.
For Craig Hutchison and Eddie McGuire, ceaseless impresarios of sport and major events through their various media companies, the NFL match was nothing less than an exclamation point marking the end point of Victoria’s listless COVID-19 years.
“It was a demonstration of love of sport, our passion for big events and why our city stands above all others in the world per capita in the want, willingness and enthusiasm to do that at 10.35am on a Friday morning (for) a sport that is not played here,” Hutchison enthused on his SEN podcast The Sounding Board.
McGuire, unofficial ambassador for exuberance on Triple M’s Mick in the Morning radio program, said he was proud of the city.
“This is the end of the COVID era … this is the end of all the dramas, we can lift our head and be proud of Melbourne again. Back in town in a big way.
“Let the politicians fight it out I don’t care about any of the stuff like that … fill a pothole in, throw a machete in a bin, we don’t care. It was tough on the Broadmeadows line in the 1970s.”
This was a lot, even for FM breakfast shows that are noted for exuberance – and we should note that one of McGuire’s very many hats is as a board member of Visit Victoria, which funded a large chunk of the NFL visit.
Which brings us very neatly to the question of cost. The normally forthright Hutchison was uncharacteristically coy when asked directly how much the game had cost the state. “More than $15 million and a lot less than it was worth.”
While the “ballpark” figure of about $15 million per game was broadly quoted in the media, what was largely ignored was the other cost – staging the event.
Simply put, that doubles the cost to at least $30 million. Extra transport, security, fan zones, the exclusion perimeter around the MCG, replacing the turf at the MCG, the MCG underground carpark becoming a vast player dressing room with players’ cabinets. And don’t think that all that media attention from NFL journalists just happened without some input from Visit Victoria.
Then there was grand dinner at Government House for more than 230 guests featuring a trio of chefs – Andrew McConnell, Karen Martini and Dan Hunter, organised by The Big Group and Food + Drink Victoria.
But the industry is very confident of a handsome return on investment. Hoteliers were ecstatic. Crown’s hotels had its second-biggest Thursday ever, while the Accor group, which has 53 hotels across Melbourne, including the Sofitel, Pullman and Novotel, was 25 per cent up on standard occupancy compared with the same time last year.
What a waste of money better spent of schools, hospitals and potholes, I hear you say. Yes, critics might well complain such major events are a sugar hit, but there is no doubting the importance of the visitor economy for us, worth a record $48.6 billion (in the year to March 2026), creating 320,100 filled jobs, the government says.
Tourism is the state’s second most valuable export sector – bringing in overseas dollars – after education, which is undergoing a reset as the federal government bans family visas and visa hopping for international students.
So the visitor economy is a long-term sustainable one.
NAB put out a press release predicting that about $300 million would flow through Melbourne businesses thanks to the NFL. Which was quickly adopted as gospel. But it didn’t say what would be ordinarily spent over that period anyway. The real economic impact assessment will come later, if it is ever released.
Carbines would not talk costs, either the NFL fees or staging costs, but said government investment in major events cemented the city as “Australia’s sporting, creative and cultural capital” that would “showcase Melbourne to millions around the world”.
“A packed major events calendar … generated $3.64 billion in economic impact in 2025,” he said.
Major events must be bought at sensible price and have an ongoing benefit, as one-off events are a waste of money, says former premier Jeff Kennett, who took the grand prix off Adelaide in the 1990s in what was regarded a signature move indicating Victoria’s revival, giving the state a sign of hope amid painful restructure and large job losses.
“Other states are envious of what we deliver. We must be forever on our toes,” Kennett says.
In reference to the state’s poor balance sheet, he doesn’t suggest crimping on major events. “Here are a few other things we are wasting money on,” he says, nominating government waste, the Suburban Rail Loop, Big Build corruption, and interest payments on government debt, which could rise steeply if the state suffered a credit downgrade.
Major events and sport such as the AFL were a “regular contributor to people’s happiness” he concludes.
And NFL will be back again as part of its three-match commitment over four years (with an option for a fourth). But is there any Visit Victoria money left to spend on anything else?
Visit Victoria, which is on the cusp of releasing its latest annual report, must demonstrate a 10 to one economic benefit, which is in its constitution.
The proof will be in whether the state can continue to attract other major events. The undoubted jewel in the crown of global musicals, Paddington, is rumoured to be going to Sydney. Can Visit Victoria win it for Melbourne? Watch and see.
The strategy of bread and circuses, panem et circenses, literally as old as the Roman Empire, means subsidising the cost of grain and staging mass public spectacles to keep the masses happy, and – crucially – distracted from their rotten status in life.
But it worked, here and in the US, where the game averaged 18.5 million viewers, ranking it among the top three most streamed games for its time slot.
David Lombardi, of The San Francisco Standard, says the popularity of his videos from Australia were an “explosion even bigger than Super Bowl coverage”.
“Melbourne, you made this exponentially more massive than Americans expected. The 49ers certainly benefited from their time in the sporting capital of the world.”
The fact is, we need this. As one damning assessment I came across put it:“Melbourne has to buy its visitors, Sydney, London and New York do not.”
Now the days are warmer. I no longer wake at 3am. The ACO is playing Mozart’s Last Symphonies at Hamer Hall next week. The grand final is a week away. A ringtail possum is camping out in my barbecue, nesting in some local shrubbery. My niece has named it Nicholas Jr after her dad. Even Southern Cross Station seems cleaner.
Meanwhile, Grant Cohn is still going. Back home, he has watched Two Hands and is trying to source a copy of The Castle.
And he announced a return visit to Australia in April when he will go wine tasting with his dad and cover the AFL. But in Adelaide, for Gather Round.
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Stephen Brook is a special correspondent for The Age and CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously deputy editor of The Sunday Age. He is a former media editor of The Australian and spent six years in London working for The Guardian.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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