Noah Eagle is expected to handle play-by-play for Netflix’s NFL telecast when the 49ers and Rams open their 2026 season in Australia, sources told Front Office Sports. Netflix declined to comment.
The game is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 10, kicking off at 8:35 p.m. Eastern — Friday morning local time in Australia — with the Rams as the designated home team. It will be the second game of the 2026 regular season, following NBC’s Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl rematch the night before. A color commentator has not yet been announced.
Eagle, 29, is no stranger to Netflix’s NFL operation. He and his father, Ian Eagle, each called one game apiece during the streamer’s Christmas Day doubleheaders over the past two seasons. The younger Eagle called a Christmas Day game for Netflix in 2024, part of a broadcasting portfolio that already spans NBC, Nickelodeon, the Tennis Channel, and the YES Network. He worked the 2026 NBA All-Star Game for NBC in place of Mike Tirico, who was assigned to the Winter Olympics.
The Australia assignment is one piece of a five-game Netflix slate for 2026. The package also includes Packers-Rams on Thanksgiving Eve, Bears-Packers and Broncos-Bills on Christmas Day, and a to-be-determined Saturday matchup in Week 18. NBC is producing the broadcasts this season, taking over from CBS, which had handled the production in prior years.
That production shift matters more than it might sound. When CBS produced Netflix’s NFL games, the booth talent came through CBS’s pipeline. With NBC now running the show, Eagle — already under contract with NBC Sports as a secondary NFL play-by-play voice and the lead broadcaster on Big Ten Saturday Night — becomes a natural fit. The 49ers-Rams game in Australia will mark Netflix’s first regular-season NFL broadcast outside the Christmas window, and the first NFL game carried by a streaming-only platform in the Asia-Pacific market.
Eagle’s trajectory has been unusually steep for a broadcaster who graduated from Syracuse in 2019. He called the first NFL game in Brazil — Packers-Eagles on Peacock — to open the 2024 season, worked Team USA basketball at the Paris Olympics, and has been a fixture on Nickelodeon’s kid-friendly NFL alternate broadcasts, including Super Bowl LVIII alongside SpongeBob SquarePants. The Australia game adds another first to that list.
No details have been released regarding sideline reporters or studio coverage for the Australia telecast. The NFL has not yet announced the venue, though the league has previously played regular-season games in Sydney and Melbourne.
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