The National Football League, the most popular show in America and the most lucrative sports league in the world, gets to call a lot of shots. It has expanded its games to more days of the week and more countries as its orbit grows and grows.

One thing it can’t seem to control, however, is the airspace above its prized product.

The Pittsburgh Steelers' game at Baltimore on Saturday was paused for a few minutes after officials identified a rogue drone flying over M&T Bank Stadium. That marked the third time in 14 months that a Ravens home game had been halted by drone activity, but the issue is far from unique to Charm City.

There were 2,845 incursions — a drone flying into restricted airspace — during the 2023 NFL season alone, according to the league. It has responded by pressuring Congress to allow local law enforcement at major sporting events to take counterdrone measures, such as using technology to safely bring down an unwelcome flying machine.

From Oct. 1, 2023, to Sep. 30, 2024, the most recent year’s worth of lobbying disclosures, the NFL has spent about $1.5 million lobbying the federal government. That includes hundreds of thousands of dollars specifically on lobbyists that, at least partially, are concerned with drone safety laws.

Last year, three firms lobbied on behalf of the NFL regarding drone safety: Capitol Counsel LLC, Covington & Burling LLP and Thorn Run Partners.

There were only about a dozen drone incursions at NFL games during the 2017 season and 67 in 2018, according to the NFL but, as hobby drones have become more common, that number has exploded. There were 2,537 rogue drone flights above NFL stadiums during games in 2022, and that number grew to more than 2,800 in 2023.

That translates to several incidents per game, but an incursion could be as innocuous as a drone pilot operating a few blocks away from a game an hour before kickoff. Such cases rarely rise to the level of halting a game, as happened Saturday in Baltimore.

“The pause allows NFL security and our law enforcement partners to assess the threat,” NFL spokesperson Tim Schlittner said in an email this week. During the pause, security officials can focus on the drone, as opposed to the game.

Midway through the third quarter of Baltimore’s 28-14 win over the Steelers, referees stopped the game before a Steelers’ second-and-1 play. The broadcast went to a commercial, and play paused for a few minutes.

The drone flew above the seating bowl, Maryland Stadium Authority Vice President Vernon Conaway Jr. confirmed to The Baltimore Banner on Saturday night, prompting the stoppage.

Above each major U.S. outdoor sporting event is a no-fly zone, and violating that airspace is a federal felony. The FBI is “aware of the drone incident and is actively investigating,” a spokesperson for the FBI Baltimore Field Office said this week.

A drone flew over a Ravens game in December 2020, prompting the stadium authority, which owns both of Baltimore’s pro stadiums, to add drone detection software at the Camden Yards complex. Detection software uses radio frequencies or other sensors to locate drones, along with their remote controls.

The stadium authority noticed a few drone violations in 2021 and 2022, but there have been several more instances recently. Twice during the Ravens’ 2023 season — once against the Cincinnati Bengals and once in the AFC championship game against the Kansas City Chiefs — a game was interrupted by drone activity.

The Pennsylvania man who flew a drone over the AFC championship was sentenced to one year of probation and a $500 fine.

Whether it’s conspiracy theories tied to them or their perception as miniature flying saucers, people sometimes scoff or roll their eyes at drones. But drones — some of which weigh as little as eight ounces — carry with them the potential for catastrophe.

If a drone were to malfunction and fall from above a stadium, it could hurt or kill someone. When it comes to no-fly violations, the vast majority of culprits are either “clueless” or “careless,” according to John Slaughter, the director of the University of Maryland’s Uncrewed Aircraft System Research and Operations Center.

But even more alarming is a third, rarer category, the “criminal,” Slaughter said. A bad actor could use a drone to attack a crowd of tens of thousands of people.

Some people who work in the drone industry “are pretty surprised that the bad thing hasn’t happened yet,” Slaughter said. “The threat is very real.”

Under current federal law, officials can monitor aerial activity around a sporting event, locate a pilot and encourage them to bring their drone down, but they cannot take action themselves. Counterdrone technology exists that would allow law enforcement to overtake a drone and safely lower it to the ground, but the law does not permit those measures to be taken — with the exception of certain events, such as the Super Bowl.

When the NFL’s security chief, Cathy Lanier, testified in front of Congress last month, she urged for drone law reform, citing three instances of interference with NFL games — two of which took place in Baltimore last season. Lanier argued that state and local law enforcement officials, who are the lead security agencies at NFL games, should have “counterdrone authority.”

The NFL and its lobbyists are pushing for passage of the Safeguarding the Homeland From the Threats Posed by Unmanned Aircraft Systems Act of 2023, a bipartisan bill. Its author, U.S. Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, has called the NFL a “key supporter of this legislation.”

Ravens coach John Harbaugh was asked during a Monday news conference about the drone pause in Saturday’s game, and he said he treats such interruptions — he must be accustomed to them by now — like a commercial timeout.

But, after a Ravens game was first paused in 2023 due to an unwelcome aerial visitor, it was a novelty for Harbaugh.

“We heard there were drones,” he told reporters after the 2023 Bengals game. “Is that what you guys heard? We saw them up there. That’s a first. I thought I’d seen it all with the Super Bowl, with the lights going out at the Super Bowl. Now we have drones flying around.”