![]() Kleindienst went on to suggest that the United States Congress re-evaluate the NFL's antitrust exemption. NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle refused to lift the blackout for the NFC Championship Game, despite a plea from United States Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. Because all home games were blacked-out, politicians – including President Richard Nixon, a devout football fan – were not able to watch their favorite team's home games, as the primary carrier for such games, CBS affiliate WTOP-TV (now WUSA) was forced to black out the games and carry alternate programming. ![]() The policy was in effect when, in 1972, the Washington Redskins made the playoffs for only the second time in 27 seasons. Later that season, when the San Francisco 49ers visited the Oakland Raiders, Raiders owner Al Davis enforced the blackout in the Bay Area to the considerable anger of CBS, the 49ers and fans of both teams. Similarly, all Super Bowl games prior to Super Bowl VII in January 1973 were not televised in the host city's market.Ī 1970 game between the Giants and New York Jets at Shea Stadium was broadcast in New York by WCBS-TV when the Jets agreed to lift the blackout to allow Giants fans to view the game live. For instance, the 1958 "Greatest Game Ever Played" between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants was unavailable to viewers in the New York City market despite the sellout at Yankee Stadium (many fans rented hotel rooms or visited friends in areas of Connecticut or Pennsylvania where signals of TV stations carrying the game were available to watch the game on television, a practice that continued for Giants games through 1972). Until 1973, league policy resulted in home-city blackouts even during sold-out regular-season games and championship games. Thus, in 1961, Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act, granting football and other professional team sports an exemption from antitrust law allowing them to negotiate television contracts as leagues and not individual teams. The Supreme Court later rejected the NFL's claim to the same antitrust exemption as baseball. The NFL argued that the antitrust exemption for professional baseball and recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court applied to it Judge Allan Kuhn Grim of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania declined to reach that question, holding that since antitrust law clearly applied to radio and television it applied in the instant case as well, and granted an injunction barring all those practices save the restriction on outside-market game broadcasts during home games. Department of Justice brought an antitrust lawsuit against the league over these provisions. Even if they gave their approval for a telecast or broadcast they might otherwise have been able to permit, the NFL commissioner was still required to approve it, and did not need to give an explanation. Teams were also allowed to restrict home-market stations from broadcasting games in other markets during the times they were playing away games broadcast live in their home market. ![]() The earliest NFL television blackout policy blacked out all broadcasts on radio and television of any games in the home city of origin and on any TV stations located within 75 miles (121 km) of the team's home city, regardless of whether they were sold out, during those time periods when the teams were playing at home. The respective cable station must be blacked out when that team is playing the said game. The league blackout policy has been suspended on a year-to-year basis since 2015.įurthermore, the NFL is the only league that imposes an anti-siphoning rule in all teams' local markets: the NFL sells syndication rights of each team's Thursday and Monday night games to a local over-the-air station in each local market. ![]() Although nationally televised games in the other leagues are often blacked out on the national networks on which the game is airing in the local markets of the participating teams, they can still be seen on the local broadcast television station or regional sports network that normally holds their local/regional broadcast rights. This makes the NFL the only major professional sports league in the US that requires teams to sell out tickets in order to broadcast a game on television locally. The National Football League television blackout policies are the strictest among the four major professional sports leagues in North America.įrom 1973 through 2014, the NFL maintained a blackout policy that stated that a home game cannot be televised in the team's local market if 85 percent of the tickets are not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time. ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) ( April 2017) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) ![]() Please help improve the article by providing more context for the reader. This article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject. ![]()
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