The initial three-year partnership will run through the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. The schedule for the US Figure Skating Championships has been re-formatted so that all finals will be on the weekend and shown live. In addition, the championships have been scheduled so as not to compete with the NFL.
The deal includes 10 hours of event coverage and various marketing and broadband rights, highlighted by additional live event coverage on NBCSports.com and US Figure Skating's IceNetwork.com.
NBC Sports & Olympics Chairman Dick Ebersol said the new format of the US Figure Skating Championships, is “almost like creating their own ‘final four’ of figure skating. It’s a very innovative approach.”
"I would not have been interested, no matter what the deal was, if they did not have this innovative scheduling. The idea that they have taken this event, which has been a terrific television property for more than four decades and radically re-formatted it so that all of the championships are over a two-day, weekend period where it can all be broadcast live, it's terrific. It's almost like creating their own 'final four' of figure skating. It's a very innovative approach and one that when I first heard about it, I was excited about."
