Ben Gilbert

And at this point in history, super early on, it was that the other 40% would go to the visitors.

Over time, the league would evolve a structural thing so that 40% went into a shared pool that got divided among everyone else to sort of lean in harder to this shared mindset.

And this is sort of before the TV revenues that are shared today.

So David, maybe this is a time to talk about television's impact on the NFL.

Who are, of course, now the Indianapolis Colts.

Well, so did the football owners for a while.

Well, so did the football owners, but they had a lot less to lose.

Well, yeah, because pro football is still an underdog sport here, even in the early 50s.

They're like up and coming.

They're trying to get more people to go to games.

And baseball generates a ton of stadium revenue from filling their 40,000 person stadiums.

Totally.

When the very first NFL TV deals were signed, and of course, these were individual local deals signed by team ownership and their local television broadcasting affiliate.

It wasn't with CBS broadly.

It was with, you know, whatever your local TV station is.

They would black out all the home games because they would say, we need to fill the stadium because until 1977, the stadium, the gate was actually the biggest form of revenue.

And so why on earth would we cannibalize our experience when someone could just watch it from home?

Absolutely not.

Which is crazy.

Like for how bad the broadcasts were, the fact that that is a suitable replacement to going to the game.