SerpApi.Org
The NFL’s first-ever regular-season game in Australia is expected to have a familiar voice calling it for Netflix.
According to Front Office Sports, Noah Eagle will be the play-by-play voice for the streamer’s broadcast of the 49ers-Rams game in Melbourne on Sept. 10, the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia. As FOS’s Ryan Glasspiegel notes, no color commentator has been named yet, and NBC will produce the broadcast, taking over from CBS, which handled Netflix’s NFL games in past seasons.
This isn’t the first time the league’s Week 1 international opener has gone to a streamer looking to make a statement with its NFL coverage. Last year, the league’s Week 1 international opener went to YouTube for its first-ever NFL broadcast, with Rich Eisen and Kurt Warner calling the Chiefs-Chargers game from Brazil. That assignment turned out to be one of Eisen’s last as a play-by-play announcer. ESPN took Eisen off NFL Network’s international slate after acquiring the network, opting for Dave Pasch instead. Eisen, who’d called NFL Network’s overseas games since 2018 and admitted he was only just starting to feel comfortable in the booth, will stay on as host of NFL GameDay Morning but is done with play-by-play. This year, that same marquee Week 1 opener slot belongs to Netflix, and the streamer is trusting it to a 29-year-old rather than a longtime NFL Network fixture.
Eagle’s been NBC’s lead voice for Big Ten Saturday Night since February 2023, and has since added the French Open, Team USA basketball at the 2024 Paris Olympics, and NFL games on Peacock to his workload, earning a 2025 Sports Emmy nomination in the same Personality/Play-by-Play category as his father, Ian. That same year, NBC also handed him a share of its returning NBA package, calling a game on the first night of Sunday Night Basketball, anchoring segments during Super Bowl coverage, and serving as the voice of NBA All-Star weekend before becoming the lead announcer for Peacock’s experimental “On the Bench” broadcasts.
He’s also already worked directly for Netflix. He and Ian became the first father-son duo to call games on the same network during Netflix’s first NFL Christmas doubleheader in 2024, with Ian on Steelers-Chiefs and Noah on Ravens-Texans alongside Greg Olsen, a broadcast Awful Announcing called “unobtrusive yet effective” despite a lopsided 31-2 final. He returned for a second Christmas doubleheader the following year, again splitting the booth with his father.
None of that compares to what Netflix is handing him in Australia. It’s one of the marquee games of the NFL’s opening week, staged at the 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground as part of a record nine international games this year, and it airs the night after NBC’s own Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl rematch kicks off the actual season opener. The game is also part of a broader expansion of Netflix’s football footprint. It picked up the Australia broadcast as one of four games the NFL redistributed after ESPN’s acquisition of NFL Network, and paired with a new Thanksgiving Eve game between the Packers and Rams, two Christmas games, and a Saturday matchup to close Week 18, that brings Netflix to five NFL broadcasts in 2026, up from two in each of its first two seasons in the sport. The streamer’s NFL deal runs through 2029, and while it hasn’t signaled any interest in bidding on a full weekly package, the growing list of marquee windows suggests it’s happy to keep collecting them.
It’s a lot of trust to put in a 29-year-old, but Netflix, as well as the younger Eagle, is going for it.
The post Noah Eagle expected to call Netflix’s NFL Australia game, per report appeared first on Awful Announcing.
