‘Sunday Night Football’ stays with NBC
STAMFORD — NBCUniversal and the NFL announced Thursday a multibillion-dollar, 11-year extension of Stamford-based NBC Sports’ run as the home of “Sunday Night Football,” the No. 1 U.S. prime-time television show for the past decade.
The new agreement will start with the 2023 season and will see the NBC broadcast network and Peacock streaming service carry “Sunday Night Football” through 2033. It comprises one of several 11-year deals made by the NFL that also include CBS, Fox and ESPN and add up to $110 billion, according to Sports Business Journal.
NBC Sports’ average annual payment is almost doubling to about $2 billion annually, but it will be lower than CBS’ and Fox’s yearly payments, SBJ reported.
“We are excited to expand upon our relationship with the NFL, which is the most powerful content in sports and entertainment,” NBC Sports Group Chairman Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. “Sunday Night Football has been television’s most-watched primetime show for a decade, and we look forward to continuing our best-inclass presentation of SNF, Super Bowls and playoff games for many years to come, while also broadening our audience with Peacock becoming the live-streaming home for all NBC NFL games.”
SNF, which debuted 2006 on NBC in 2006, is on track to finish as the most-watched prime-time program for a record 10th-straight year. During the 2020 regular season, the show averaged a total of 17.4 million viewers across the NBC broadcast channel and digital platforms.
“Comcast (parent company of NBCUniversal) and the NBC family have been outstanding partners for us, and we are excited to continue that relationship long into the future,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “Sunday Night Football is firmly established as the No. 1 show in primetime television, and we are looking forward to working with NBC and Peacock to continue to bring the NFL to more fans in more ways
than ever before.”
A number of sports media experts also endorsed the deal.
“Sunday Night Football remains NBC’s sports flagship,” said Daniel Durbin, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Sports Media and Society. “They’ve been able to rely on it as a ratings winner for years, and this gives them the promise of another 11 years. That level of stability in broadcasting is not that common today. With the continuing slide to streaming television, ‘Sunday Night Football’ gives NBC a weekly broadcast to draw live viewership.”
Comprehensive coverage
As a result of the new deal, NBC Sports will present four of the next 13 Super Bowls, including Bowl LVI in February 2022. NBC and Peacock will also broadcast and stream Super Bowls in February 2026, February 2030 and February 2034.
Super Bowl XLIX in February 2015 ranks as the most-watched show in U.S. TV history, with about 114 million viewers having watched the New England Patriots’ 28-24 defeat of the Seattle Seahawks.
“Having long-term rights to the top-rated weekly sports broadcast also gives NBC credibility as a sports network,” Durbin said. “As the notion of ‘major’ networks continues to fade into the ether, SNF gives NBC some right to claim that it still has ‘important’ and exclusive live event broadcasts. It allows them to claim to be a ‘major.’ ”
In each of the next 13 seasons, NBC will broadcast a divisional playoff game. In addition, NBC will televise two Wild Card playoff games during the 2021, 2022, 2023, 2026, and 2031 seasons, with a single Wild Card telecast in all other seasons. In each of the next seven seasons, NBC will broadcast
a Sunday prime-time Wild Card game. All NBC NFL postseason games will stream live on Peacock.
Peacock will also serve as the exclusive national home of six NFL regular-season games — one each year from 2023 to 2028. It will also launch a virtual NFL channel, which will highlight classic games and feature NFL Films’ series, library and archival content.
Football Night in America — the mostwatched studio show in sports in every year since its 2006 debut — will continue to lead off NBC’s Sunday NFL coverage. FNIA’s studio operations are based at NBC Sports’ headquarters at 1 Blachley Road, yards from Interstate 95’s Exit 9.
Telemundo Deportes will present all NBC NFL games on television in Spanish beginning in 2023. Those games will also available for livestreaming on Peacock.
The agreement can be terminated on a “onetime basis” by the NFL after seven years.
NBC Sports has re-committed to the NFL amid a period of many organizational changes.
Its current contract with the NHL is scheduled to run out at the end of the current season, although NBC Sports have not ruled out future partnerships with the league. Last week, the NHL announced a major deal with Walt Disney Co., to start carrying games next season on ESPN and ABC.
In January, the broadcaster informed employees that it would shut down its NBCSN cable channel by the end of the year. The closing reflects the growing importance of Peacock, while a significant amount of content will move to the cable USA Network, which is another division of NBCUniversal. NBC Sports employs more than 900 in Stamford, according to data recently provided by the company. The end of NBCSN will not result in any local job cuts, according to city officials.