Televised sport

The Epsom Derby was Britain’s first ever live sport broadcast. Televised on June 3, 1931, it was also the first remote outside broadcast in the world. The favorite, Cameronian, won.

The first televised sporting event outside of the UK was a Japanese elementary school baseball game, broadcast in September 1931.

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences. The 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, were the first to be shown internationally on television. 

Olympic cameraman 1936

The first live television broadcast of a football match was shown by the BBC. They showed a specially arranged fixture between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves on September 16, 1937.

The first televised sports event in the US took place on May 17, 1939. With a single camera near the third-base line, WXBS-TV in New York televised a collegiate baseball game between The Columbia Lions and the Princeton. Bill Stern was the announcer. At the time there were only 400 TV sets in America.

The first televised major-league baseball game was broadcast on August 26, 1939, by experimental station W2XBS, which is now WNBC. The game was between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds, and the Dodgers won 6-1. Announcer Red Barber interviewed Dodger manager Leo Durocher and Reds manager Willliam McKechnie between games. 

NBC broadcast the first televised American football game on September 30, 1939, between the Fordham Rams and the Waynesburg Yellow Jackets. The game was played at Triborough Stadium on New York City's Randall's Island, and Fordham won 34–7. The broadcast was only available to a small audience, as there were only about 400 television sets in the New York City area at the time. 

The first televised basketball game was shown by NBC station W2XBS (now known as WNBC) from Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 28, 1940. The game featured the University of Pittsburgh beating Fordham University 50-37. The broadcast was experimental, and the game was shown only to a small audience in the New York City area. Though it had a limited number of cameras and no replays, the broadcast was still a significant moment in the history of sports and television. It paved the way for the widespread coverage of basketball and other sports on television, 

In 1951 the first major league baseball game to be televised in color was broadcast. The Brooklyn Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves 8-1.

The first live sporting event seen coast-to-coast in the United States, a college football game between Duke and the University of Pittsburgh, was televised on NBC in 1951. 

Because broadcast satellite technology wasn’t invented yet, footage from the 1960 Rome Olympics was videoed and flown back to the US by airplane and often aired events the same day they happened.

Instant replay added a new dimension to televised sports when it was used for the first time in a live sports telecast during Army v  Navy Football Game at Municipal Stadium, Philadelphia on December 7, 1963. When CBS re-played a one-yard touchdown run by Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh, the station's switchboard was inundated with calls from confused viewers asking if the player had scored a second time. Navy won 21-15. In 1964, instant replay became a standard technique on television.

Geostationary satellites meant the 1964 Olympics were the first TV program to cross the Pacific Ocean.

The first Super Bowl in 1967 between The Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs remains the only Super Bowl that was broadcast simultaneously by two television networks: NBC and CBS. 

On November 17, 1968 viewers of the Raiders–Jets American football game in the eastern United States were denied the opportunity to watch its exciting finish when NBC broadcast Heidi instead, prompting changes to sports broadcasting in the U.S.

Program cover from the Jets-Raiders game from November 17, 1968