The International Olympic Committee has awarded CTV and Rogers Communications broadcast rights to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the Summer Games in 2012.

"Bell Globemedia/Rogers Media came to us with a comprehensive package that will allow not only the broadest coverage of the Olympic Games but also the promotion of Olympic sports and Olympic values beyond the 16 days of competition," IOC President Jacques Rogge said in a news release Monday.

"This substantial offer brings Canadian TV rights to an unprecedented level in terms of value and breadth and quality of coverage."

The announcement  came after a day of meetings between an IOC team led by Rogge and competing Canadian broadcasters.

"All of us at Bell Globemedia and Rogers are thrilled to be chosen and we thank the IOC for their confidence in us," Ivan Fecan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bell Globemedia, said from Lausanne, Switzerland.

"Vancouver 2010 will be the biggest event of the decade in Canada and it's wonderful to be in the middle of it. We are also very much looking forward to 2012 and beyond."

CTV will showcase the Olympics on its main network as well as its subsidiaries, including TSN, and its French-language arm, RDS, Outdoor Life Network, which is licensed to broadcast outdoor sports.

Rogers Communications plans to air Olympic content on its regional sports network Rogers Sportsnet, as well its radio network, headed by the FAN 590 in Toronto, and Rogers' two multicultural stations in Toronto.

With all those networks aboard, the CTV-Rogers consortium can offer round-the-clock coverage. In all, more than 4,000 hours of coverage is planned.

The size of the winning bid was pegged at $153 million US -- $90 million for the 2010 Games and $63 million for the 2012 Games.

In contrast, CBC paid just $73 million for the 2006 and 2008 Games. But with the Winter Games being played on Canadian soil in 2010, the stakes shot up.

"This is the first time that the amount for the [Winter] Games exceeds the Summer Games,'' IOC Finance Commission chairman Richard Carrion noted.

The last time CTV had rights to broadcast the last Canadian Olympics -- the 1988 winter games in Calgary -- the bid was approximately $4.5 million.

CBC has had the rights to the last five sets of Olympic Games. CTV's last Olympic broadcasts were Barcelona (1992) and Lillehammer (1994).

TV rights account for approximately 50 per cent of Olympic revenue. Approximately 3.7 billion people tuned in to the last Summer Games in Athens.

Similar negotiations were held with United States broadcasters in 2003, and in Europe last year.

NBC was the winning bid, agreeing to $2.2 billion US for rights for the next two Olympics, which includes $820 million US for the Vancouver Games.

The host city for the 2012 Summer Olympics has yet to be chosen. That will happen on July 6. Madrid, London, New York, Paris and Moscow are in the running with Paris considered the front-runner.

While the announcement is great news for CTV, it's not good for CBC Sports, which is already suffering from the NHL lockout.

The IOC declined to say how much the CBC offered, but Carrion noted that "it was a very hotly contested negotiation.''

Fecan said negotiators decided that the 2010 Games would likely be the biggest sports event in Canada this decade and was worth making a strong bid.

"We also think there is a huge amount of interest from the viewers and the advertisers for 2010. And so, we put on our thinking caps and sharpened the pencils and decided that we wanted to make a strategic, responsible bid," he said.

With a report from CTV's Tom Kennedy