The NFL who run the Superbowl has banned you from ever seeing the footage of the original NFL Super bowl broadcast, thanks to not having a Superbowl tape themselves, and not paying a local fan for their own Superbowl NFL.
The game is question was the Green Bay Packers’ 35-10 win over the Kansas City Chiefs.

The NFL Superbowl is arguably one of the world’s greatest sporting events next to the soccer world cup (football for my European viewers), the Olympics and even the greatest game of all time, space jam.

Yet you can’t watch it anywhere. It’s not available to buy, rent or even find on some dark corner of the web. That’s because there is only one copy of the tape in the world and its stuck in a deep dark vault.

I’m nick from Found and Explained, and this is the story of the first super bowl tape.

You may have never heard of Troy Haupt, a nearly 50 something nurse from North Carolina. But he is well known to the powers that be at the NFL, as the man with a plan who has in his possession the only tape of the first Superbowl.

Our story actually begins back in 1967. Troy’s late father, Martin Haupt, recorded the game on an ancient Quadruplex taping machine. This was well before the advent of home taping devices and this machine itself was quite rare. Little did he know that CBS, NBC nor the NFL would have their own copies of the broadcast.

Back then tapes were valuable, more so than the content that was recorded on them. There are countless stories of how tv stations constantly rerecorded over the magnetic tape strips from that error, such as BBC losing entire episodes of the first few seasons of doctor who.

The lack of footage of the first Superbowl was so sought after, that in 2005 sports illustrated proclaimed that a copy of this game would be worth a one million dollar reward for anyone who could find it.

Hearing this years later, Troy remembered that his father had some old tapes handed to him and said that one day it might pay off his children's college degrees. Racing upstairs, he found he had a tape that had 75% of the game, not including the ending nor the halftime show. But still was the only copy of the first/ 1st Superbowl broadcast ever made

Troy would approached the NFL and show them the tape, asking for a price of around $1 million dollars. In 2016, the NFL had made around $15 billion USD. So the asking price was not out of the question, especially for something if broadcast would make it back by the first adbreak

The NFL’s response to this one of a kind tape of their original game?

An offer of $30,000 dollars.

Now this is where it gets interesting. Troy has argued that the tape is an item of history and that he should be able to sell it to either the NFL or someone else for the value that he believed it to be worth. The NFL has argued that they own the rights to the game and thus he has no rights to sell it to anyone else.

Written in a letter to troy the NFL state:

““Since you have already indicated that your client is exploring opportunities for exploitation of the N.F.L.’s Super Bowl one copyrighted footage with yet-unidentified third parties,” Dolores DiBella, a league counsel, wrote, “please be aware that any resulting copyright infringement will be considered intentional, subjecting your client and those parties to injunctive relief and special damages, among other remedies.”

Part 2 – the court arguments…

Does the NFL have a solid argument? Well, they certainly do own the rights to the broadcast, but a copy of it? Using a Copywrite law from the 70s, from years after the game took place? And Troy is only meaning to sell the tape, not broadcast it, so is the voiding a Copywrite of a single copy that he is not duplicating?

Since then, the NFL has put together old clips into a full game and is using it as the first super bowl. However, the true first copy of the game only exists in a vault controlled by Troy. And until these two parties can come to an understanding, that’s where it will sit.

There is another solution that Troy may have not had a consideration. He can sell back the footage to the NFL. But offer them the physical tape, which he has full rights too, for $970,000.

What do you think? Should the NFL or Troy own the tape? Let us know in the comments.

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Original New York Times article: www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/sports/football/super-b…