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The Merger Part Three: TV Saves the AFL

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

It’s not too strong a statement to say that Lamar Hunt changed the face of American sports. While he never considered himself a pioneer in any way, clearly his ideas on where sports figured in a marketplace blossoming in the post-war world were prescient and ones that he and a few far-seeing executives in his newly formed American Football League recognized.

Television and sport were on the verge of creating a symbiotic relationship. In Hunt’s original sketched notes made on American Airlines stationary back when he considered forming a new football league, he recognized the importance of all league teams sharing in what could be gained from a television network contract.