Ben Gilbert

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.

I mean, they would put like one camera up on the 50 yard line and they wouldn't do like any microphones and they would just be like, all right, this is the game.

And maybe they'd have some commentators.

And all the way through the 50s, it wouldn't really be a particularly large revenue line.

But as it did start to grow, everyone's negotiating individually.

It ended up being the case that the New York Giants were making $200,000.

And this is in 1959 on their TV deal.