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CTV, in its bid to return as a major player in sports programming, hit the long bomb by acquiring National Football League television rights to Sunday games and the Super Bowl.

Out after decades of airing NFL games is Global Television, which couldn't match the media platforms or money that CTV and Rogers Media put on the table.

Both CTV and Rogers announced three-year deals with the NFL Tuesday, starting this coming season.

Rogers has acquired the rights to the 4 p.m. Eastern time game, which it will carry on Rogers Sportsnet's four feeds and the Rogers-owned Omni.2.

CTV will air the Sunday 1 p.m. game as well as the playoffs and Super Bowl.

"We're delighted," CTV president Rick Brace said. "I wanted to get more sports on CTV and this is a terrific opportunity."

After being a leading carrier of sports content in the 1990s, CTV's programming has been limited the past several years to figure skating.

In 2005, CTV-TSN and Rogers teamed up to acquire rights to the Olympic Games in 2010 and 2012.

Barbara Wilson, Global's senior vice-president of programming and production, indicated in a statement that the network refused to match the money that CTV and Rogers were willing to pay for NFL rights.

" At the end of the day … the business reality presented wasn't one that we deemed economically sound in the long term for our network or advertising partners," she said.

Speculation about what CTV and Rogers paid for the rights ranged from $10-million to $15-million a year.

It's believed that Global's rights fee was between $8-million and $10-million a year.

Brace said CTV came late to the bidding, but got involved quickly.

"The NFL asked if we were interested and we thought it would be a good fit," he said.

The NFL, the gold standard in the United States, is also a valuable property in Canadian television. The Global telecasts last season averaged about 400,000 viewers a game, equal to that of Canadian Football League telecasts and more than the viewership for Toronto Blue Jays games.

For the past two years, the Super Bowl produced a larger audience than the Grey Cup. The 2007 Super Bowl on Global pulled in 3.6 million viewers, compared with 3.2 million for the 2006 Grey Cup on the CBC.

Global lost NFL rights not just as a result of being outbid, but because it couldn't compete against the media and marketing platforms presented to the NFL by CTV and Rogers.

The NFL is promoted on Rogers Cable, the largest distributor in the Toronto market, and Rogers offers the league's pay package, NFL Sunday Ticket. As well, Rogers's chief executive, Ted Rogers, is attempting to bring an NFL franchise to Toronto.