How Super Bowl I’s footage was finally found

Journalist Devin Gordon tells the story of how a single copy of the first Super Bowl broadcast currently resides in a Manhattan museum.

Last week on Pablo Torre Finds Out, journalist Devin Gordon told the story of how he had the opportunity to be one of the few people in the world to watch the first Super Bowl’s broadcast after it was shown live. According to Gordon, fewer than five people — outside of those in the museum in which it is stored — have had the chance to watch it.

As Gordon tells it, the broadcast was originally filmed by an employee at a tape repair shop — well before VCRs. When that employee was diagnosed with a deadly illness, he passed the tapes along to his family, hoping that one day they would have value. One of them did, as Super Bowl I’s broadcast was lost for decades — despite the game being shown on both NBC and CBS at the time.

For about ten years, there was a million-dollar bounty on the broadcast footage of Super Bowl I, which eventually got relayed to the son of the former tape repair shop employee. He then attempted to sell the footage to the NFL for that one million dollar price tag, only to receive a $30,000 offer from the league — partly because halftime and seven minutes of the third quarter were missing.

Now, the footage sits in a Midtown Manhattan museum, where you need permission from the son to watch what his father recorded back in 1967. If you’d like to listen to or watch Gordon’s full retelling of his story, including what he witnessed when he had the opportunity to watch Super Bowl I’s broadcast, you can find the YouTube episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out linked below.