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| Long title | An Act to amend the antitrust laws to authorize leagues of professional football, baseball, basketball, and hockey teams to enter into certain television contracts, and for other purposes. |
|---|---|
| Acronyms(colloquial) | SBA |
| Enacted by | the87th United States Congress |
| Citations | |
| Public law | Pub. L. 87–331 |
| Statutes at Large | 75 Stat. 732 |
| Codification | |
| Acts amended | Sherman Antitrust Act |
| Titles amended | Title 15—Commerce and Trade |
| U.S.C. sections created | 15 U.S.C. §§ 1291–1295 |
| Legislative history | |
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TheSports Broadcasting Act of 1961 (SBA); (codified15 U.S.C. §§ 1291–1295)[1] is aU.S. federal statute that amendedantitrust laws to allowprofessional sports leagues to pool thebroadcasting rights by all their teams and sign league-wide exclusive contracts with national networks. It also added provisions limiting the days, times, and locations of when and whereprofessional football games could be telecast under this antitrust exemption so they avoid competing with mosthigh school football andcollege football games.[2]
The Sports Broadcasting Act was passed in response to the cumulative effect of variousantitrust court cases against theNational Football League (NFL) dating back to the 1950s.[3]
With the advent of television, the NFL gave its teams permission to sell the broadcast rights of games to local stations in 1947. However, this caused stadium attendance to significantly drop as fans could watch the games on TV for free instead of buying tickets to see them in person. By 1949, only theLos Angeles Rams were broadcasting their home games. To address the attendance issue, the league implemented its firstbroadcasting blackout policy in 1951:all broadcasts on radio and television ofany games in the home city of origin and on any television stations located within 75 miles (121 km) of the team's home city wereblacked out (not aired), regardless of whether they were sold out, during those time periods when the teams were playing at home. 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. Even if they gave their approval for a telecast or broadcast they might otherwise have been able to permit, theNFL commissioner was still required to approve it, and did not need to give an explanation.[3][4]
TheU.S. Department of Justice brought an antitrust lawsuit against the league over this blackout policy on grounds that it violated theSherman Antitrust Act since the policy essentially gave the NFL unilateral power to decide where games would be broadcast instead of the individual teams. The NFL argued thatthe antitrust exemption for professional baseball andrecently reaffirmed by theU.S. Supreme Court applied to it. In his 1953 ruling, JudgeAllan Kuhn Grim of theEastern 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.[4] The Supreme Court later ruled inRadovich v. National Football League in 1957, rejecting the NFL's claim to the same antitrust exemption as baseball.[5]
In 1960, the rivalAmerican Football League (AFL) began its first season, bolstered with the help of a major network contract withABC. The AFL's contract with ABC was the first-ever cooperative TV plan in professional football, in which the league pools the broadcasting rights by all their teams, signs a league-wide exclusive contract with a national network, and the proceeds are then divided equally among the member clubs. Attempted to duplicate the AFL's success with ABC, the NFL signed a similar contract withCBS in April 1961. The league then filed a petition with the District Court, stating that the CBS contract did not violate Judge Grim's previous 1953 ruling. Grim however disagreed, ruling that the new agreement would instead give CBS the unilateral power to decide where games would be broadcast instead of the individual teams.[3][6][7] The NFL then lobbied Congress to override the ruling, and the Sports Broadcasting Act was signed into law by PresidentJohn F. Kennedy on September 30.[3]
The Sports Broadcasting Act permits certain joint broadcasting agreements among the major professional sports. It recognizes the fact that the various franchises in a sports league, while competitors in the sporting sense, are not as much business competitors as they are interdependent partners, whose success as enterprises is intertwined, as a certain level of competitive balance between them must exist for any of them to remain viable enterprises. Therefore, it permits the sale of a television "package" to a network or networks in which the league members share equally, a procedure which is common today. Of the fourmajor North American professional team sports, the Act is most pertinent to the NFL, as all of its regular-season and playoff games are broadcast via the rights assigned to the networks via national broadcast rights packages, as opposed to local team broadcast rights as found in the other leagues.
The law has been interpreted to include the aforementioned blackout rules which protect a home team from competing games broadcast into its home territory on a day when it is playing at home, and from being required to broadcast games within its home market area that have not sold out, though none of the leagues implement such rules any longer.[8]
The act withdrew antitrust immunity for any professional football telecast if a high school or college football game is being played within 75 miles (121 km) of the broadcasting station on Friday nights (after 6:00 p.m.) and Saturdays from the second Friday in September until the second Saturday in December. Because many college and high school games across the country are played within that proximity of a broadcasting station during those days and times, the NFL avoids scheduling any games during those days and times altogether.[8][9]
The NFL extended its season in 1978 to allow a few weeks of Friday night or Saturday games after the second Saturday in December, if the league so wished. Late-season Saturday games have been common since then, but Friday night games are still extremely rare; the league has played only nine Friday games since 1978, mostly because of the NFL's restrictions during Christmas. In 2005, aMiami Dolphins-Kansas City Chiefs game, scheduled for Sunday, October 23 in Miami, was moved up to 7:00 p.m. Friday night due toHurricane Wilma. The game was televised only within 75 miles of Miami and Kansas City (outside of the home teams' markets, only affiliates inWest Palm Beach,St. Joseph, andTopeka were allowed to televise it).[10][11][12]
The NFL's introduction of a "Black Friday" game in 2023 circumvents the act by being scheduled as an afternoon game with a 3:00 p.m. kickoff, with the game usually reaching its conclusion by the 6:00 p.m. curfew specified by the act.[13][14]
In 2024 and 2025, anNFL International Series game was scheduled atArena Corinthians inSão Paulo, Brazil on the first Friday of September, both nationally televised via streaming platforms. Because Labor Day weekend in 2024 and 2025 also fell on the first Friday of the month rather than the second, it allowed the NFL to legally play those games on Friday before the restrictions took place (notwithstanding the venue being located much more than 75 miles from the stations that would be televising the game due to NFL rules for national games not on broadcast television).[14][15]