Prices as of Wednesday, September 9, 2026, 2:25 p.m. ET. Updated from the September 5 edition after the Rams ruled Aaron Donald out of the trip.
The 49ers have been in Melbourne since Friday morning local time, and George Kittle and Nick Bosa were on the plane. Ian Rapoport reported it at 7:03 a.m. ET on Wednesday, September 2, hours before the charter left: Kittle would travel after two positive practice days and was "trending in the right direction to play," and Bosa, "ramping up with his knee," would go too. Bosa practiced later that day for the first time in nearly a month and told reporters afterward he felt great and expects to play. The one name reported to stay behind was defensive end Sam Okuayinonu, with a foot injury the team listed as questionable. Two minutes before the report, the last trade on San Francisco winning this game printed at 37 cents on Kalshi. Some 116,000 contracts have traded since the start of that Wednesday, and the 49ers are 35 bid, 37 ask. The market watched two of the players this page said would decide the number board a plane and, after a round trip, ended up exactly where it started.
The roster waiting for them changed too. Aaron Donald, 35 and retired for two and a half years, came back to the Rams on August 30 on a one-year, $20 million deal that can reach $30 million with incentives, joining Myles Garrett on a defensive line that now employs two former Defensive Players of the Year. Rapoport reported on Friday that Donald "is still TBD on playing," and Sean McVay's line on it, on the Rams' own site on August 31, was "I wouldn't rule anything out yet." The decision came Tuesday, September 8: the Rams ruled Donald out of the opener and he did not make the trip, per the AP, with McVay saying the team was "making a decision that we think is best for him and for our team" after three weeks of conditioning and with a 16-hour flight ahead; his first available game is the Monday night home opener against the Giants on September 21. Myles Garrett, meanwhile, did not practice Wednesday with a knee, on the Rams' report of the week that still carries no designations.
The game is 49ers vs Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday, September 10, at 8:35 p.m. ET, which is 10:35 on Friday morning in Melbourne. The Rams are the home team on paper only; both rosters fly roughly 8,000 miles to a stadium neither has seen. Kalshi trades the Rams at 64 bid, 65 ask to win it, a midpoint of 64 and a half cents on a contract that pays a dollar. The 49ers are 35 to 37. The spread crossed the field goal months ago; what I do with that is the whole page, and the plane that already landed is now half the argument. The pick is at the bottom.
Stay ahead of the markets.
Daily insights and expert picks on Kalshi, Polymarket, and what's moving markets.
Free forever. Unsubscribe anytime.
The Game Lines
Kalshi in cents (the ask, what it costs to buy). DraftKings in American odds. The middle column is this page's September 2 edition.
| Line | Kalshi now | Kalshi Sept. 2 | DraftKings now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moneyline: Rams win | 64-65¢ | 65¢ | -198 |
| Moneyline: 49ers win | 35-36¢ | 37¢ | +164 |
| Spread: Rams win by 4 or more | 51-52¢ | 51¢ | LA -3.5 (-118); Caesars -4.5 (-109) |
| Spread: Rams win by 3 or more | 60-61¢ | 60¢ | the -2.5 this opened at is gone |
| Total: over 48.5 points | 47-48¢ | 48¢ | DK back at 48.5 (over -108 / under -112); 84% of the total money is on the under |
Read the two moneyline rows together and the week's story is already there. DraftKings opened Rams -2.5 (-120) in May and climbed through 3 to -3.5 while its Rams moneyline went from -155 to -198; since this page's last edition it has come back to -185, with the 49ers at +154 from +164. Strip the vig from the pair and the book's fair number on the Rams went from about 63.7 percent to about 62.2 percent, a point and a half toward San Francisco. Kalshi's Rams contract sat at 64 bid, 65 ask the entire time, the same 64-and-a-half midpoint on both dates. One venue paid something for Kittle and Bosa boarding the plane. The other did not.
The two spread rungs each moved a cent, in opposite directions, and the gap between them grew: it is now 11 cents between "Rams by 3 or more" at 61 and "Rams by 4 or more" at 50, up from nine. That 11 cents is the market's price on Los Angeles winning by exactly three, and it shows what crossing that number already cost. The total, which had not moved off 48.5 all summer, has started to leak: DraftKings is 47.5 now, with the over at -124, Pinnacle and Circa sit at 48, and FanDuel and roughly half the board still post 48.5. Kalshi's "over 48.5" contract slipped from 48 to 47 cents to buy (46 bid).
The Plane Left With Both Of Them. The Price Stayed.
Here is the 49ers' moneyline tape since the report, so "the market did not move" is shown rather than asserted. In the 12 hours after Rapoport's 7:03 a.m. post on Wednesday, 19,574 contracts traded on San Francisco, between 34 and 37 cents. The first print after the report was 36; the last one in that window was 35. The biggest single moment came at 3:35 p.m. ET, when 3,000 contracts were sold into the bid at 34 in seven fills. By midnight the 49ers were 34 bid, 35 ask. On the day two of their biggest question marks flew to Australia, the 49ers got cheaper.
Then the buyers showed up, and this is the part I keep coming back to.
| 49ers moneyline, by ET day | Contracts | Buy-side taker fills | Traded range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, Sept. 2 (report day) | 38,410 | 63% | 34¢ to 37¢ |
| Thursday, Sept. 3 | 28,878 | 95% | 34¢ to 36¢ |
| Friday, Sept. 4 | 30,786 | 90% | 34¢ to 37¢ |
| Saturday, Sept. 5 (to 4:20 p.m.) | 18,259 | 86% | 35¢ to 37¢ |
Source: the Kalshi trade tape for the San Francisco contract. A buy-side taker fill is an order lifting the offer rather than hitting the bid.
Thursday is the row to stare at: 28,878 contracts, 95 percent of them buyers, and the ask finished the day at 36. Across Thursday, Friday and Saturday through the time stamp on this page, 77,923 contracts traded on the San Francisco side and 70,728 of them, about 91 percent, were buy-side fills. Three days of nearly one-way buying moved the ask from 35 back to 37. Which is to say, to exactly where it sat before anyone knew Kittle and Bosa were going.
The one contract in this game that did see a burst of business was not the moneyline at all. "Rams win by over 1.5 points," a rung that had traded 116 contracts on report day, printed 22,514 contracts between 4:33 p.m. ET Friday and 12:29 p.m. Saturday, in 19 fills, all but 32 contracts of it buy-side at 61 cents, the largest a 5,305-contract cluster at 8:34 p.m. Friday. That is 85 percent of everything the contract has ever traded, landing in 20 hours. Someone wants the Rams by two or more at 61, while the plain Rams moneyline costs 65: they are paying four cents less to give up the one-point Rams win. I do not know who and I will not pretend to; the size and the price are what the tape shows.
Put the exchange next to the books and the picture sharpens. On the live odds screen, where you can shop this number across every major book, Pinnacle has the Rams -189 and, on the spread, Rams -3.5 at +101 with 49ers +3.5 at -114. The sharpest book on the board is paying you plus money to lay 3.5, which is the market's way of saying it would rather this number were 3. DraftKings is -108 on the Rams side of 3.5 and -112 on the 49ers side. Kalshi's equivalent of the 49ers +3.5, "no" on "Rams win by over 3.5," is 50 bid, 51 ask; add Kalshi's per-contract fee, about two cents at that price, and it is a wash with the books. The venue is not the point. The number is.
Eight Thousand Miles, Two Opposite Plans
Nobody has ever prepared an NFL team for a Friday-morning kickoff in Melbourne, so the two coaches did opposite things with the same problem. San Francisco's charter took off from the Bay Area on Wednesday night, a Qantas A380, and landed in Melbourne on Friday morning local time after a flight of more than 15 hours; Thursday disappeared somewhere over the date line. They practice at AAMI Park on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, three full game-week workouts in the city. The Rams fly out of Los Angeles on Wednesday, September 9, and land in Melbourne on Thursday, the day before kickoff, the same plan they used in London last season, when they became the first NFL team to arrive one day before an international game, landed on a Saturday and beat the Jaguars 35-7 on Sunday. Shanahan told CBS Sports in late July: "Usually when you travel with a [16]-hour flight, you don't want to get there the day before because... you're just messed up," and, in the spring, when the schedule came out: "The people we've talked to, you don't feel normal until like the third or fourth day." McVay's counter, same outlet: "It'll be a similar approach, and really the goal for us is to try to keep guys in as close to a rhythm and routine as possible. This is new to us, even going this far."
The roster Shanahan flew early is the one that was banged up all summer, and it is healthier than it was when this page first ran. Kittle came off the PUP list on August 23, seven and a half months after tearing his right Achilles on January 11, and practiced on consecutive days before the flight. Bosa, who had not practiced since early August with tendinitis in the surgically repaired knee, took team reps on Wednesday, said he felt "great," and put it this way to reporters: "Once you get into team (workouts) there's no reservations. There's no compensating here, no governor, so I felt that today." Christian McCaffrey, who missed a chunk of camp, is back at full speed by the San Francisco Standard's account. Okuayinonu, a rotational end who started 12 games last season, is the one who stayed behind. San Francisco's win total has priced the health question since July; the Rams' playoff board assumes the loaded roster shows up whole.
The arrival is the one travel event that has actually happened, and the market's answer to it is in the table above. The charter touched down on Thursday afternoon Eastern time, Friday morning in Melbourne, with both stars on it. Thursday was 28,878 contracts on the San Francisco side, 95 percent of them buyers, and Friday added another 30,786 at 90 percent; across the two days the ask went from 35 to 37. The body-clock argument this page was built on became a fact the moment that plane landed, and the price of the team that bought the extra week still sits exactly where it did before anyone knew Kittle and Bosa were going.
The MVP's Back, And How Close It Came To IR
The Rams' best case starts and ends with Matthew Stafford, the one thing McVay does not fully control. The quarterback turned 38 this year, won MVP last season, and is managing a reportedly degenerative back issue; he opened camp on a modified schedule that skips the first and third days of every four-day practice block by design. It nearly broke last summer: McVay has said, via Yahoo Sports, that the two sat down and discussed putting Stafford on temporary IR. Stafford found a routine that worked and played the whole season. All of that is real. So is this: the plan for that back is a 16-hour flight landing the day before a 10:35 a.m. kickoff, and Stafford himself said the quiet part back in February, via CBS Sports: "Seems like a long flight and I hope my back's not too sore afterwards." The market has not charged a cent for any of it. The Rams contract has not printed outside 64 and 65 on any of the six days in the tape, including the days the back-and-the-flight story was live, and the two spread rungs that matter, Rams by 3 or more and Rams by 4 or more, moved one cent each. The Rams' win total is priced on him staying upright for 17 games; this page only needs an opinion about the first one.
The Number I'd Take, And Where I'm Out
The spot is a division game with the division removed from it. These teams split last season: the Rams put 42 on the Niners at Levi's, and San Francisco walked into SoFi with Mac Jones and won 26-23 as a touchdown-and-a-half underdog. Shanahan is 11-8 against McVay in 19 meetings. Now put that rivalry on a field 8,000 miles from both of them, at a lawn-bowls hour of the morning, in the one week of the year when nobody has a snap of current-season tape, and the market wants me to lay more than a field goal. A -3.5 at SoFi carries the crowd somewhere inside the number; this one carries no crowd at all, a bigger statement about the teams than the same number in a normal week.
Now the favorite's side of the ledger: the Rams recorded 47 sacks in the 2025 regular season, 2.8 a game, then added Garrett this offseason and Donald on August 30, and Brock Purdy was pressured on a fifth of his dropbacks and sacked 14 times in 11 games. If you're laying the 3.5 because you think the trenches decide this by two scores, that's a defensible read, and it would be a better one with Donald in uniform, which it will not be.
But that read was available at -2.5 in May, and the market already spent the crossing of 3 getting here. Since then the 49ers' two best arguments for keeping this inside a field goal, a healthy Bosa across from that line and a healthy Kittle in it, got on a plane, and the only venue that charged anything for it was a sportsbook trimming 13 cents off its favorite. I'm not laying 3.5 on a neutral field against the coach with the winning record in the series, with a 38-year-old quarterback managing a degenerative back off a 16-hour flight that lands the day before, in a game whose biggest variable, the body clock, has never been priced because it has never existed.
Outside of a field goal, give me the 49ers +3.5, and on Kalshi the same position is "no" on "Rams win by over 3.5" at 48 to 49 cents on Wednesday, three better than the 51 it cost when this published. If this moves to 3, I'm out; the entire point of the bet is sitting on the right side of that number, and at 3 you've paid the premium for nothing. Pinnacle's plus money on the Rams side of 3.5 suggests the drift is toward 3, not away from it, so the window is the window. Donald is not suiting up, and the number still went the other way at one book: Caesars posted Rams -4.5 (-109) on Wednesday while DraftKings held 3.5 (-118) and Pinnacle 3.5 (-111), with 71% of DraftKings' spread tickets but only half the money on the Rams. The free expert picks page is where the rest of the Week 1 card lands.
The stake stays small until the Monday-to-Wednesday reports out of AAMI Park show Kittle and McCaffrey taking full team reps, and if Bosa is downgraded in Melbourne I'm not adding, because a number bet with half a pass rush is enough exposure. If I'm wrong, the trenches will be why. The total is a pass: 48.5 held all summer, DraftKings has now shaded it to 47.5 and Pinnacle to 48, the Kalshi over trades at 47 cents, and I don't bet a total when the biggest input, football at breakfast, has no history for anybody. Tell me why I'm wrong.
More on this: 49ers vs Rams: Someone Bet Six Figures At Midnight · Bears vs Panthers Odds: The Over Money And The Tape Disagree · Broncos vs Chiefs Odds: Everybody's On Denver · Cardinals vs Chargers Odds: Someone Keeps Selling L.A. · Giants Vs Rams Odds: 71,000 Contracts Bought, Then Dumped
What Moves The Price From Here
- Monday to Wednesday, Melbourne: the 49ers' three AAMI Park practices. Kittle, Bosa and McCaffrey participation notes are the whole ballgame for this number; Wednesday's report had Kittle (Achilles) and Bosa (knee) limited, McCaffrey not listed, Kyle Juszczyk limited with a finger and James Thompson Jr. out of practice with a hamstring; net of a three-day round trip, the market has priced none of the good news yet, so it can only price the bad.
- The Donald decision: made. He is out and stayed home. Caesars went to Rams -4.5 anyway on Wednesday; DraftKings and Pinnacle held 3.5, and Kalshi's Rams price held at 64 to 65 cents. Garrett's knee is now the front-seven question.
- Wednesday, September 9: the Rams' wheels-up. A Stafford back note attached to the flight plan is the scenario the 65 cents is not carrying, and he told you in February the flight worries him.
This one settles on Thursday, September 10, 2026, at the final score, Friday morning Melbourne time.
Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. George Kittle photo by All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0; Puka Nacua photo by Sewageboy, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; photos cropped, toned, and composited.
Prices quoted are live Kalshi market prices as of Saturday, September 5, 2026, and will keep moving until these markets settle after the September 10, 2026 game. OddsShopper covers prediction markets as an independent analyst: any model or panel figures referenced are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Betting involves risk; contracts can go to zero. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.
