Jack Nicholson, who sits in the front row of every Los Angeles Lakers sports game, once told an interviewer he attends games because sports are the only drama he can’t predict the ending of. Yet in the early days of television, there was some reluctance among teams to extend that drama to viewers at home. After all, if people could watch it for free on television, why would they buy tickets to go to the game? Eventually, one by one they relented, and the first sports league games began to make their appearances on television.

On this day, February 28, in 1940, the first basketball game aired on television –between two college teams. The professional league of the National Basketball Association would not come about for another decade or so.

Sports coverage became a much larger moneymaker in the decades following, and skyrocketed with the debut of the ESPN sports network. It its early, early years, the network paid to cover the NCAA basketball tournament, and was the only network to air the matchup between two future Hall of Fame players, Larry Bird and “Magic” Johnson. Some 2.4 million viewers tuned in.