Rolling in the money.
At this point, Sunday Night Football and Carrie Underwood are pretty much synonymous. This year marks the country singer’s 12th season performing Sunday Night Football’s opener, taking over for fellow female country superstar, Faith Hill, during the 2013 season.
For years, many have wondered just how much the “Undo It” singer makes per year for her performance, and it seems like we’ve finally got a number. According to a report from SportsKeeda.com, Underwood received a whopping $1 million per game during the 2023 season.
While it’s a little hard to determine just how many times her “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” version has aired due to the NFL’s schedule expansion from 17 weeks to 18 weeks per season in 2022 coupled with the fact that the NFL will sometimes label non-Sunday night games such as the season opener and Thanksgiving games as “Sunday Night Football” presentations, it’s estimated that she’s performed the song approximately 194 times using this frame of reference:
- 2013-2021 – 17 games (x9)
- 2022-2023 – 18 games (x2)
- 2024 – 5 games (so far)
Though it’s not been officially confirmed that she has made $1 million per performance for all 12 seasons, using the aforementioned Sunday Night Football games played since she took over in 2013 coupled with the reported $1 million per game, it can be estimated that Underwood has made nearly $200 million dollars off of Sunday Night Football performances alone.
While this number does seem quite insane, it’s not like there isn’t a lot of work put into creating the song week in and week out. In an interview with Sirius XM back in 2023, Underwood revealed that she records one main version of the song every year before filling in lines with all the different teams that will play throughout the NFL’s 17-week season and playoffs, “It’s one main version top to bottom and then kind of filling in lines. So, when we go in to record, we do it all at once.”
In the interview, she also noted how she’ll record a plethora of different combinations of teams just in case there’s an off-chance that different matchups and teams get their schedules flexed into the Sunday night time slot or a team not projected to do well sneaks into the playoffs:
“I do the whole main version, but then we go through and pick up all the matchups for each week of regular season football and then we go into playoff football. And I then sing every possible combination of teams that could possibly, maybe play each other, even if you know, even if in the back of your mind, you’re like, ‘I know they ain’t going to make it into the playoffs. I don’t know why we’re doing this.’ We do it anyway just because the one time you don’t they’re going to call you up and you’re going to have to go back in the studio, so just get it all done.”