The story
Founded by Ed Sabol and Steve Sabol in 1962, in Philadelphia.1
Founder Ed Sabol was a World War II veteran who worked selling topcoats after returning to the United States. In his spare time, he used a motion picture camera, received as a wedding gift, to record his son Steve's high school football games. Inspired by his work, Sabol founded a small film company called Blair Motion Pictures, named after his daughter Blair.
Sabol won the bidding for the rights to film the 1962 NFL championship game for $5,000, double the bid for the 1961 championship game. The film of that game impressed NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who asked the owners of the NFL to agree to buy out Sabol's company. Although the owners rejected Rozelle's proposal in 1964, they agreed a year later and renamed Sabol's company NFL Films. He received $20,000 in seed money from each of the league's then 14 owners, and in return would shoot all NFL games and produce an annual highlight film for each team.
In June 1966, the NFL agreed with the rival American Football League to merge in 1970. One of the reasons the leagues initially remained separate entities was to give Sabol adequate time to expand NFL Films in order to service a significantly enlarged league. Under the merger terms, NFL Films began covering the American Football League (AFL) in 1968, ostensibly under a newly established "AFL Films" division. In reality, "AFL Films" crews were simply regular NFL Films personnel wearing separate jackets to appease AFL loyalists.
On August 6, 2011, Ed Sabol was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a major contributor to the National Football League. Sabol died on February 9, 2015, at his home in Arizona.
From Wikipedia’s article on NFL Films, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4