NFL is selling Australia game as part of a mini-package

In the past, the NFL sold the Week 1 international game on a one-off basis. This year, that's changing.John Ourand of Puck reports in the latest edition of his Varsity newsletter that the 49ers-Rams game in Melbourne has been folded into a package of five or six total games.Per Ourand, Fox and YouTube were interested in the Melbourne game. Now, whoever gets it will be buying other games, too.As Ourand surmises, the four international games that flowed back to the NFL as part of the ESPN merger presumably will be included in the new package. The possible (which is more fairly termed "likely") Thanksgiving Eve game could be part of it, too.It could result in a payday landing somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion, over and above the billions the NFL will receive from its existing broadcast-rights packages.The package is being sold at a time when the league is believed to be negotiating an extension of the broader deal with CBS, with the possible plan to move on to Fox and the other companies that currently hold the rights to the existing windows.The NFL plans to play the Melbourne game on either Wednesday, September 9, or Thursday, September...