Canadians love their Super Bowl

A decade ago, the Grey Cup drew more Canadian viewers than the Super Bowl.

In 2005, New England’s victory over Philadelphia drew 3.1 million viewers to Global Television in Canada, down from 3.56 million in 2004 and 4.2 million in 2003.

Meanwhile, Toronto’s Grey Cup victory over B.C. the previous November drew 4.012 million viewers on CBC. How times have changed. Now, the Super Bowl gets twice the Canadian audience that the CFL’s championship game gets.

The Grey Cup, with about 4 million Canadian viewers, remains among the most watched events in this country. The Super Bowl this past Sunday had an estimated 110 million viewers worldwide, and about 9 million in Canada.

“The NFL has really become a marketing juggernaut everywhere and the spillover into Canada has been quite astounding over the last decade,” said Bob Stellick, a sports marketing consultant who operates Stellick Marketing Communications in Toronto.

The Super Bowl made inroads in several ways and one was by appealing to younger audiences who have grown up playing video games and following stars such as Katy Perry, who put on a dazzling halftime show.

The CFL fell behind by not coming up with video games to compete with “Madden.”

CFL interim commissioner Jim Lawson attributed the success of the Super Bowl’s TV numbers to a “perfect storm” with the reigning champion Seattle Seahawks facing the bigmarket New England Patriots, with a 37-year-old quarterback in Tom Brady looking for his fourth Super Bowl ring.

“It was projected to be a great Super Bowl, and it was more than just hype,” Lawson said.