Jonas Brothers are tied to the NFL’s first-ever regular season game in Australia, where the league used Sept. 11, 2026, to mark the 25th anniversary 9/11 memorial. The game gave the NFL a rare international stage and turned Melbourne Cricket Ground into a ceremony site before Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers kicked off.
At Melbourne Cricket Ground, the sold-out crowd stood for the national anthem and sang along to Advance Australia Fair, then cheered the Star-Spangled Banner as Infinity Song performed it. Roger Goodell later recalled Sept. 11, 2001, saying, “I had gotten into the office, and we actually heard the plane go over” and “People walking in saying, 'Did you hear that?' And I said, 'I heard it. What was it?'”
Melbourne Cricket Ground and 9/11
The NFL’s first regular season game in Australia folded a 25th anniversary 9/11 memorial into the pregame program, with a joint contingent of U.S. Marines and sailors carrying the colors alongside members of the Australian Defence Force. That setup made the day unusually dense: a league showcase in Australia and a remembrance of 9/11 on the same stage, with the ceremony built around national anthems, military honors, and the league’s Salute to Service partnership.
Roger Goodell’s recollection of 2001 gave the tribute its personal frame. He was in the office when he heard the plane go over, then heard people asking what they had heard. In business terms, the NFL did not just stage an overseas game; it used a one-off international window to attach its most solemn public memory to a new market debut.
Vinny Testaverde and the conflict
Vinny Testaverde added the bluntest counterpoint to the anniversary programming. He said, “I told the Jets that I didn't think it was the right decision to play” and added, “They pretty much to a man had my back.” His reaction captures the league’s oldest wound from 9/11: the decision to keep playing the following weekend, even as some inside the sport argued for a different response.
The NFL Foundation also supported week-long activities for military families of the fallen with a connection to 9/11, including a ceremony at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. Netflix ran a segment memorializing 9/11 and the NFL’s reaction on the tragic day and the decision about what to do afterward, which broadened the day’s reach beyond the stadium and into the league’s own history.
Australia, the league, and what comes next
The choice of Australia made the memorial feel deliberate rather than incidental. A first regular season game in a new country created space for a public remembrance that could travel with the league’s brand, its military outreach, and its international ambitions all at once. For readers watching the NFL as a business, the takeaway is simple: the league used a market-expansion event to carry a 9/11 tribute, not to separate the two.
That is why the headline is not just that Los Angeles Rams played San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne. It is that the NFL turned its 1st-ever regular season game in Australia into the only 25th anniversary 9/11 memorial tied to a game played on Sept. 11, with the tribute built into the ceremony rather than bolted on afterward.
Kevin Jonas leads the halftime stage in Australia sat beside the broader league event, while Joe Jonas and the podcast nickname reveal kept the Jonas Brothers name moving through the same news cycle. In this case, the sharper story is not the celebrity tie-in by itself; it is the way the NFL used Melbourne, Victoria, and a sold-out crowd to make an anniversary program part of the game’s identity.
