Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 affects Title 15 of the United States Code , Chapter 32 " Telecasting of Professional Sports Contest " ( § § 1291 - 1295 ) Overview . The Sports Broadcasting Act was passed in response to a court decision which ruled that the NFL ' s method of negotiating television broadcasting rights violated antitrust laws . The court ruled that the " pooling " of rights by all the teams to conclude an exclusive contract between the league and CBS was illegal . The Act overrules that decision , and 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 interdepedent 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 four major North American professional team sports , the Act is most pertinent to the NFL , as all of its regular - season and playoff games are covered by the rights assigned by its various packages with the networks , including its own . The law has been interpreted to include the so - called " blackout rules " which protect a home team from competing games broadcast into its home territory on a day when it is playing a game at home , and from having to broadcast games within its home market area that have not sold out . It also , in effect , protects high school football and college football game attendance by blacking out pro football games locally on Friday evenings and Saturdays during those sports ' regular seasons ; these measures effectively outlawed the broadcasting ( and , in practice , the playing ) of NFL games on those days , since virtually all of the country is within 75 miles of at least one high school game on every Friday night in September and October . This portion of the act has since been partially circumvented ; the NFL extended its season in 1978 to allow several weeks of Friday night or Saturday games 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 eight Friday games since 1978 , all but one in December ( a Chiefs - Dolphins game set for Miami on Sunday , October 23 , 2005 , was moved up two days due to Hurricane Wilma ) . The National Collegiate Athletic Association ( NCAA ) ' s broadcast packages are not subject to the antitrust exemption and it suffered for it , when the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA ' s restrictive television policies were a violation of antitrust law in the 1980s when the University of Georgia and the University of Oklahoma sued the NCAA over television restrictions ( limit of six television appearances over two years ) established in 1952 . However , after their court victory , neither Georgia nor Oklahoma made serious efforts to market their own television packages , but instead followed the lead of their conferences , the Southeastern Conference and the Big 8 Conference respectively . The College Football Association , an alliance of 64 schools from some of the major conferences and selected independents , sold their own television package in 1984 , first to ABC , and later to CBS . The Big Ten and Pac - 8 conferences , not CFA affiliates , sold their own separate package , to ABC . By 1990 , the landscape changed . ABC had both the CFA , Big Ten , and Pac - 10 packages , and NBC the Notre Dame home package . It was once again relegated to limited appearances . The CFA collapsed , and in 1995 , the Southeastern Conference signed a national deal with CBS . They are the only major conference guaranteed a national " game of the week " because ESPN ' s games may come from any of the conferences they offer . Current views on the Sports Broadcasting Act . In November 2006 , former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter , ( D - PA ) proposed legislation to repeal the NFL ' s antitrust exemption under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 . Specter ' s concern was based on the National Football League ' s NFL Network , which is available in a limited number of homes , as compared to the other broadcasters of the NFL . For the 2006 - 07 NFL season , each NFL team annually earned more than $ 120 million in shared TV money . The league ' s officials negotiated various deals with CBS , NBC , Fox , and Disney , and ended up with a six - year ( later extended to eight ) , $ 24 billion broadcast and cable rights contract . The television deals end in 2013 . Additionally , DirecTV paid $ 700 million every year through 2010 for its Sunday Ticket package . The NFL also decided to keep an eight - game Thursday - to - Saturday night package in - house , placing it on its NFL Network . Both the Sunday Ticket and NFL Network became issues of concern to Specter , possibly because DirecTV rival Comcast is headquartered in Pennsylvania . Comcast ' s Versus network attempted to bid for the eight - game package the NFL gave to their own network , but lost . The NFL Network still has not reached agreements with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision to carry the league - owned network . League officials wanted an excessively high per - subscriber fee for the network in relation to its programming , according to Time Warner executives . Meanwhile , Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan has said nothing publicly about his negotiations with the NFL . The NFL Network ' s high per - subscriber fees charged to the cable companies force cable firms to offer the channel as a premium - tier network . This , according to the NFL , is unacceptable , and they demanded their channel be placed on a basic tier , as compared to the higher - priced sports tiers . By doing so , cable companies would have to reduce the number of basic channels or increase the basic cable package rate to comply with the NFL ' s request . NFL rules however , require that NFL games shown on cable channels ( including the NFL Network ) , be shown on a broadcast television station in the markets of the participating teams ( subject to blackouts when necessary ) . The other major concern is the lack of availability of NFL Sunday Ticket , restricting it severely through its exclusivity with DirecTV . A similar situation happens with NASCAR HotPass , which moved from the cable companies to DirecTV in 2007 , and thwarted by Major League Baseball ' s MLB Extra Innings , which MLB attempted to push to DirecTV exclusively starting in 2009 , but was stopped by threats from legislators . In what may have been a goodwill gesture to Senator Lautenberg of New Jersey and , in an effort to sway Specter , the NFL gave Time Warner and Cablevision subscribers a free week of programming between December 24 and December 30 , 2006 . The timing allowed subscribers to tune in to the Rutgers – Kansas State Texas Bowl matchup and another college bowl game featuring Minnesota and Texas Tech . Lautenberg had complained that many Rutgers fans in New Jersey were being unfairly denied the opportunity to watch Rutgers in the Texas Bowl because the NFL Network , which has rights to the game , had not yet reached deals with Cablevision and Time Warner Cable .