David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Well, yeah, because pro football is still an underdog sport here, even in the early fifties. They're 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. Indeed, baseball had a lot to lose. And to be fair to all of them, in the early days, and I think for a long time, local market home television airing of home games absolutely depressed in-person attendance. 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 whatever your local TV station is, they would black out all the home games because they would say, "We need to fill this stadium." because until 1977, the stadium, the gate was actually the biggest form of revenue. Why on earth would we cannibalize our experience when someone could just watch it from home? Absolutely not.…

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