History Of The Nfl Superbowl

A Brief History of the NFL Superbowl

This was war! Since its inception seven years earlier, the upstart American Football League (AFL) had fought the National Football League (NFL) for players, fans, television revenues, and respect. The successful new league had won everything except, respect. On January 15, 1967 the first World Championship game against the AFL and the NFL took place. The powerhouse NFL champions the Green Bay Packers against the AFL champion the Kansas City Chiefs. What ended in a 35 to 10 loss to the NFL, the AFL earned its long sought after respect. But the winner that day was not the AFL or even the NFL; it was professional football.

January 15, 1967 was the first ever Super Bowl. A few seasons later it was the
The NFL and CBS agreed to broadcast rights in 1961. But also in 1961, Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act, which permitted leagues to act as cartels in the negotiation and sale of their broadcast rights. This led the NFL to make arrangements, which all networks got some games at some times. When the broadcast rights were sold on a club to club basis, fans got the chance to see their local teams' away games. It bought a new dimension to the avid sports watcher that has never been seen before in the professional football league.

Over time, television increased the club revenues drastically. After the AFL and NFL merger the Super Bowl in particular began to be tossed between different networks mainly CBS and NBC. CBS form 1967 to 1984 aired the Super Bowl ten times while NBC aired it nine times. The rating began each year to drastically increase more and more while the popularity of the sport and the implementation of more organized television contract became apparent. In fact the rating increased shockingly fast from 22.6 percent in 1967 to as much as 49.1 percent in
In 1982 a new contract was reached in which the networks paid the teams an average of $14.2 million a season. But in 1987 when that contract was up, negotiations became rather difficult. In his book Playing for Dollars Paul Staudohar states "During the last two years of the old agreement advertisers were less willing to pay large fees, which caused the networks to lose money." And as though no negotiation was in site cable television emerged and entered the scene as an active bidder for broadcast rights. ESPN a 24-hour sports news channel, which was owned by ABC, agreed to pay 50 million dollars per year for eight regular season Sunday night games. In fear of losing all rights to cable networks ABC retained its rights to Monday night football and CBS and NBC to Sunday afternoon football