Supreme Court rejects Bell and NFL’s play to stall Super Bowl ad decision

The Supreme Court of Canada shot down an attempt by Bell Canada and the National Football League to stall a regulatory decision on Super Bowl advertising before the championship game on Feb. 4.

Canada’s highest court this week dismissed the application by BCE Inc.’s media division and the NFL to stay the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s decision to ban broadcasters from swapping U.S. ads for Canadian ones during the most-watched live TV event in the country. The CRTC prohibited the practice known as simultaneous substitution in the name of giving Canadians what they want — the ability to watch big-budget American commercials.

Bell and the NFL asked for the stay in early January when it applied for leave to appeal the CRTC’s decision at the Supreme Court. They argue the CRTC does not have the jurisdiction to ban simsub for a single program. Bell said the ban cost it $11 million last year and cited it as a factor when it cut dozens of jobs from local TV and radio stations last winter.

While the court did not grant the stay, Judge Russell Brown did grant their request to deal with the leave to appeal on an expedited basis, and to expedite the hearing if they are granted leave to appeal.

The last-minute attempt to overturn the ban before the big game may have failed, but Bell isn’t giving up its fight. “We will continue to pursue every option to have the Super Bowl’s simultaneous substitution ban reversed for 2019 and beyond,” spokesman Scott Henderson said in an email Friday.

Meantime, Bell will “do everything we can to maximize the audience on our channels.”

Like last year, the first year without simsub, it will host a standalone broadcast of Super Bowl LII on CTV where Canadians can watch Canadian ads. It will also give out $300,000 worth of prizes to CTV viewers.

Previously, Canadian ads were also substituted over the Fox broadcast, but now viewers can see the American ads. That was apparently enough to make football fans change the channel. In 2017, Bell’s ratings for CTV, CTV Two and TSN plummeted 39 per cent to an average audience of 4.47 million, down from 7.32 million in 2016.