How Did The Sports Broadcasting Act Of 1961

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The History of The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 Noah Lewis Jacksonville State University Abstract The History of The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 On September 30, 1961 John F. Kennedy (JFK) signed into law The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. This could be said to be one of his many lasting impressions on the sports world today. If it was not for him signing that law into place who knows how the sports industry would have ended up. Sports teams such as, the National Football League (NFL) was trying to sell the rights to televise their sporting events but it fell under antitrust laws so the NFL teams had to sell their televising deals separately. This hurt the smaller teams but helped the bigger ones …show more content…

The Sports Broadcasting act of 1961 was one of the few sports specific laws that the Congress or the state legislature has passed. It is also one of the most beneficial as well. The law let the NFL get past the antitrust laws and were able to sell the television right to the NFL as a whole. The NFL teams split the Money evenly amongst themselves. This helped out the smaller teams in the league. This gave them the opportunity to make more money which in turn helped grow the organization. This made it where they could get better players and when the team gets better the more fans the team will have. The NFL ended up selling the rights to televise the games to Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). One of the only downsides to the televising of games is if the games …show more content…

The deal that was set in place in 2007 had it were ESPN and Turner Sports paid the NBA 930 Million dollars a year as part of the money they get from being able to show the games on their network, but starting in 2016-2017 the new deal comes into play. The new deal makes it where the NBA gets paid around 2.6 billion dollars a year. That is an increase of 180 percent. That means there is a ton more money going into the NBA the deal that they signed with ESPN and Turner Sports is a nine year, $24 billion media deal. That just shows how much the sports industry is still