NFL owners approved the extension – which creates “marquee match-ups” for the Sunday night games during the regular season’s final seven weeks - at a meeting in Chicago, according to a news release by the General Electric-owned network.
In May the NFL also extended its broadcast-rights agreements with CBS and Fox for two years until the 2013-14 season. In NBC’s original deal, signed in April 2005, it paid around $600 million a year to broadcast the Sunday night games.
Under the terms of the deal, NBC will air 16 regular-season Sunday night games, each season’s Thursday night kick-off game, and two Saturday games during the playoffs’ first round.
NBC said in February that its broadcast of the 2009 Super Bowl between the Steelers and the Cardinals was the most-watched program in television history, attracting an average of 98.7 million viewers.
