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Why is the Super Bowl on a Sunday?

Since its inception in 1967, every Super Bowl has been played on a Sunday.

Yes, the NFL is closely associated with Sundays and has been for decades, so it makes sense that the league’s championship game is played on the same day. But why?

The Super Bowl is on a Sunday primarily due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which pushed the NFL to play the majority of its games on Sundays, as well as the league’s wish to optimize TV ratings.

The Sports Broadcasting Act, passed in 1961, is a federal law that allowed United States-based professional sports leagues to pool their television rights for broadcasting purposes.  

Within this law is a ruling that states any professional football telecast, in this case the NFL, is illegal on Fridays after 6 PM and all day on Saturday, from the second Friday in September to the second Saturday in December, if there is a high school or college football game being played within 75 miles of the broadcast station.

In simpler terms, the law was passed to protect attendance and viewership for high school and college football games, which traditionally take place on Friday nights and Saturdays, respectively.

And given both sport’s popularity across the U.S., it is virtually impossible to stage an NFL broadcast further than 75 miles away from the closest high school or college football game.

Still, the modern-day NFL season extends beyond the three-month span mentioned above. This is why the NFL schedules Saturday games in the late regular season and playoffs, as well as Friday games.

In 2024, the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers played a Week 1 regular season game in Brazil on a Friday night, and the Kansas City Chiefs and Las Vegas Raiders squared off on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Both of these games were scheduled cleverly.

Eagles-Packers occurred on Friday, September 6, the first Friday of the month, which precedes the three-month span established by the Sports Broadcasting Act.

Chiefs-Raiders, as well as the inaugural Black Friday game in 2023 between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets, began at 3 PM ET, preceding the 6 PM cutoff.

So it’s clear that if the NFL wants to have a game on a Friday or Saturday, it will find a way to do so. But the league is yet to move its biggest event off of its favorite day – Sunday.

This decision was addressed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in 2018 on “The Kyle Brandt Football Experience.” The reason? TV ratings.

"That [idea] has been around for a long time, people have talked about that," Goodell said of moving the Super Bowl to a Saturday. "The reason we haven't done it in the past is simply just from an audience standpoint. The audiences on Sunday night are so much larger. Fans want to have the best opportunity to be able to see the game and we want to give that to them, so Sunday night is a better night." (h/t The Kyle Brandt Football Experience, CBS Sports)

The ratings for recent Super Bowls exceed those of any live television broadcast in the history of the United States, so it seems like the decision to keep the game on a Sunday is the right one.

This has been met with strife by fans across the nation, who have responsibilities, most notably work or school, on the Monday following the Super Bowl, known as one of the biggest social events of the year.

Petitions have been signed by tens of thousands of people to move the game to a Saturday, but it is highly unlikely the NFL will ever budge from the day of the week they are synonymous with.

Read the latest NFL news on site.

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