The First Super Bowl Is Locked Up In A Vault
We live in the digital age where accessing archives of footage is only a few clicks away, but the footage of the first Super Bowl is being held hostage from public eyes in a lawsuit between the NFL and a nurse anesthetist. Troy Haupt owns the only known copy of the CBS broadcast, and the NFL asserts they own the rights to the Quadruplex tape recordings.
Both CBS and NBC lost their footage years ago, likely due to recording new programs over the game. In 2016, the NFL puzzled together their own restored footage to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl. In 2020 there was a Kickstarter to cover legal fees and get the tapes released for all to see, but the funding fell short of its goal, leaving the game in streaming purgatory.