Professional Team Sports In
The Age Of Television
The Super Bowl
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National Football League and the
American Football League merged in
1966.
First Super Bowl held in 1967
Within 6 years of its founding, the Super
Bowl enjoyed a larger national audience
than the Kentucky Derby or the World
Series.
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Super Bowl on TV
Network Number broadcast Years
broadcast Future scheduled telecasts
ABC 1985, 1988, 1991, 1995, 2000, 2003, 2006
CBS 1967, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978,
1980, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1990, 1992, 2001,
2004, 2007,2010
FOX 1997, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011
NBC 1967, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1979,
1981, 1983, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1996,
1998, 2009, 2012
Percentage of All Households
Pro Basketball
Five
Year
Average
79-83
NCAA
Basketball
Big League
Baseball
Bowling
Boxing
NCAA Football
0
10
20
Pro Football
Woes of Baseball
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Beginning in the mid-1960s the television
audiences for regular season baseball
games fell to nearly half of that of regular
season professional football games.
Why the loss of fan support?
-Shift in urban leisure patterns1. Slums surrounded many big league parks
2. Activities during the summer (ex. fishing,
golf, camping etc.)
Baseball on television isn’t the
same.
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It was very difficult to capture all of the
dimensions of baseball on television.
Only a few games seemed crucial due to
the long season.
Sports Broadcasting Act
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Passed by Congress in 1961.
The Sports Broadcasting Act was passed in
response to a court decision which ruled that the
NFL's method of negotiating television
broadcasting rights violated antitrust laws.
The court ruled that the "pooling" of rights
by all the teams to conclude an exclusive
contract between the league and CBS was
illegal.
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The Act overrules that decision, and
permits certain joint broadcasting
agreements among the major professional
sports. It permits the sale of a television
"package" to the network or networks, a
procedure which is common today.
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The law has been interpreted to include
the so-called "blackout rules" which
protect a home team from competing
games broadcast into its home territory on
a day when it is playing a game at home.
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The NCAA's broadcast packages are not
subject to the antitrust exemption and it
suffered for it, when the Supreme Court
ruled that the NCAA's restrictive television
policies were a violation of antitrust law.
That is why there is no such package
called "NCAA College Football."
Early Days of Pro Football
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Cradle for infant football- Tough mine and
mill towns in western Pennsylvania and
Ohio.
Unlike college football, the early ambience
of the pro sport was ethnic, Catholic and
working class.
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Until the mid-1950s, NFL teams rarely
earned profits.
In the early days, the newspapers,
especially outside the cities hosting pro
teams, all but ignored the NFL.
By the mid-1950s televised pro football
was attracting millions of new viewers.
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Television created a nation of instant
experts in no time.
The perfection in the 1960s of instant
replays and slow-motion shots allowed
fans to experience the game in an entirely
different way from that of the spectator in
the stands.
How was football different?
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By giving visiting teams 40 percent of the
gate receipts, the NFL avoided the gross
disparities in revenues among franchises
characteristic of major-league baseball
and pro basketball.
More importantly, the NFL split television
revenues equally among the franchises.
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By 2002 a typical NFL franchise was worth
twice as much as its baseball
counterparts.
Professional Basketball
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Until the 1950s, professional basketball
languished in the long shadows cast by
college teams, Amateur Athletic Union
fives and the Harlem Globetrotters.
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The New York Original Celtics, occasionally
drew as many as 10,000 fans to Madison
Square Garden.
In the 1930s the New York Rens, an allblack five, and the Philadelphia Sphas, an
all-Jewish quintet, fielded strong teams.
NBA came about in 1949 due to a merger
between the NBL and BAA.
Problems
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Even the teams in the larger cities
continued to schedule some of their home
games in high school gyms in smaller
cities.
Pressure from the fans and television
induced the NBA in 1954 to adopt a 24second rule.
Boom of 1960s
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NBA attendance increased from less than
two million in 1960 to ten million in the
late 1970s.
Network television remained lukewarm
toward the NBA.
1980s
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Beginning in the mid-1980s, the NBA
became the fastest growing and
apparently the most financially successful
of the professional team sports.