The Road to the Merger Part 3: TV Saves the AFL

No less than Hunt acknowledged what this meant. “Getting Werblin was the [AFL’s] turning point,” he said for years afterwards when asked what helped to bring about the AFL-NFL merger.

But that did not become clear until 1964.

The AFL’s original television deal was with ABC-TV – a series of five one-year deals that was renewable each year. Each team realized about $100,000 per team. CBS-TV had paid NFL teams $4.62 million, or $950,000 per club.

But ABC opted out of the final year of the contract, and this is where Werblin’s influence mattered most. NBC-TV had lost in the bidding war to CBS for the NFL rights. Carl Lindemann, VP of NBC Sports, still smarting from the loss of his NFL bid, immediately took a call from Werblin, now owner of the Jets.

Timing was everything, and contacts didn’t hurt either, which Werblin had in spades. He was tight with NBC president Bob Kintner, who happened to love sports, and Werblin knew it.