The History of Sports Broadcasting

By ColinMorikawa18
  • Period: to

    The history of sports broadcasting

  • Kansas vs Missouri first ever sports broadcast

    Kansas vs Missouri first ever sports broadcast
    In 1911 around 1,000 people gathered in Lawrence Kansas to "watch" the Kansas @ Missouri football game. Since this game was in Missouri they had someone there with a telegraph relaying live plays back to them. They would announce what just happened and map it out using a model of a football field. This is the first instance of sports broadcasting that we know of.

  • First Radio Sports Broadcast

    First Radio Sports Broadcast
    The first radio broadcast happened on April 11th, 1921 when KDKA in Pittsburgh aired a live announcement for a boxing match between Johnny Dundee and Johnny Ray at Pittsburgh's Motor Square Garden. This marked the beginning of the popularity of live radio sports broadcasts.

  • First Televised Sporting event

    First Televised Sporting event
    The first televised sporting event was a college baseball game between the Princeton Tigers and the Columbia Lions. It was hosted by NBC who later that year would televise the first football game on air as well.

  • The introduction of Broadcasting in Color

    The introduction of Broadcasting in Color
    Back in 1951, the first sports color telecast was a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves. This added a lot of value for fans across the nation and it only became more popular from there.

  • Super Bowl I

    Super Bowl I
    The first Super Bowl was played in the LA Coliseum and was broadcast to 65 million Americans. Interestingly enough both CBS and NBC had rights to the broadcast so they shared it.

  • ESPN introduces the in-game box score

    ESPN introduces the in-game box score
    In 1995 ESPN introduced the in-game box score to sports telecasts. Over the next decade, viewers would expect this constant graphical reminder of the score and time remaining when watching any type of game. Something we couldn't go without nowadays.

  • World Cup Gets 5 Billion views

    World Cup Gets 5 Billion views
    FIFA estimated that the World Cup got around 5 billion views during its month-long run. The highly anticipated final between France and Argentina reached a global audience of 1.5 billion fans. This really just shows how universally available sports broadcasting has become.