A rivalry that cost both sides
In the early 1960s, professional football in the United States was a two-league contest. The established National Football League had the bigger crowds and the stronger prestige. The American Football League began play in 1960 and survived because of one thing above all: television. A network contract gave the younger league a steady income and allowed its teams to compete for talent.
The competition for players became expensive. Teams in both leagues bid for college stars, and the best-known case is the AFL’s signing of Joe Namath by the New York Jets in 1965, for a contract reported at around $400,000, a sum that was then treated as astonishing. Such deals pushed up costs for owners on both sides, which helps to explain why a settlement became attractive.
The merger agreement of June 1966
On 8 June 1966 the two leagues announced an agreement to merge. The terms were broad. The leagues would hold a common draft starting in 1967, play a championship game between their champions, and be fully merged under one structure by 1970, with Pete Rozelle as commissioner. The agreement also involved adding teams. The NFL had added Atlanta in 1966 and awarded a franchise to New Orleans, which began play in 1967, and the AFL added a Miami team in 1966 and a Cincinnati team that would begin play in 1968.
The merger needed approval from Congress because it affected antitrust law, and legislation allowing it passed later in 1966. Reports at the time linked the political process to the placing of a franchise in New Orleans, though the details of the political bargaining are best left to specialist histories. An earlier law, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, had already allowed leagues to sell their television rights as a package, which was the legal base for the networks’ deals.
Television as the engine
Television rights were central to the whole story. The NFL’s games were carried by CBS and the AFL’s by NBC, and the AFL’s contract with NBC, signed in 1964, is usually put at several tens of millions of dollars over five years. That deal gave the younger league credibility and a basic level of financial stability, and it is often described as the reason the league could survive long enough to force a merger.
For the first championship game in January 1967, both networks showed the broadcast, an unusual arrangement that reflected the fact that each league had its own network partner. It also showed that football television rights were now valuable enough to be shared between rivals.
Football suited the medium. A weekly schedule of a small number of games meant each match felt like an event, and the sport’s stop-start structure fitted commercial breaks, replays and commentary. Broadcasts in colour also helped, as color television reached more American homes in the late 1960s.
What changed after 1967
The following years saw a rapid change in status. When the Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in January 1969, the AFL’s standing changed, and it became harder for NFL supporters to dismiss the younger league. Two years later, in 1970, the full merger took effect, with the leagues becoming two conferences of one NFL, and three older NFL teams (Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore) moving to the American Football Conference. By then the total number of teams was 26.
In the same year, ABC began broadcasting Monday Night Football, putting regular games in prime time. The sport that had once ranked behind baseball in public attention became, by most measures, more heavily watched, though the claims about when football overtook baseball in popularity are uncertain and depend on how popularity is measured.
A pattern that spread
The same logic, that television money rewards leagues and expansion, affected other sports. The NHL expansion of 1967 doubled that league from six teams to twelve, partly, by most accounts, with the hope of attracting a United States television contract. Basketball’s ABA began that year as well.
The first championship game was not itself the starting point of this growth, since the commercial logic had been set earlier. What the January 1967 game did was make the deal visible to the public: two leagues and two networks, one stadium, and a very large audience.