No more U.S. ads for Super Bowl broadcast

Canadians will not be able to watch American Super Bowl ads during the broadcast of the National Football League’s championship game thanks to the renegotiated trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico. In an annex in chapter 15 of the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Canada agreed to scrap a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission policy that banned broadcasters from replacing U.S. ads with Canadian ones during the big game, a practice known as simultaneous substitution or “simsub.”

The CRTC introduced the populist rule in 2016 so viewers would stop complaining about missing the big-budget U.S. commercials that some find more appealing than the sport itself. Football fans liked the change, with millions abandoning local broadcasts to watch the game on U.S. stations for the past two years.

Yet the broadcast regulation got swept into the talks after major corporations on both sides of the border cried foul. Both the NFL and BCE Inc.’s Bell Canada went on the offensive against the rule that hurt their ability to make money from the most-watched live TV event in the country.

Bell paid the NFL tens of millions for exclusive rights to broadcast the Super Bowl north of the border, a cost it recoups by selling airtime to Canadian advertisers. These ads had been forced onto every feed, including U.S. stations. But without simsub, Canadians audiences flocked to U.S. stations, decreasing the amount Bell could charge for ad space. That cost it $11 million in 2017 alone, Bell said. The NFL lobbied the Prime Minister’s Office, the international trade minister’s office and three members of parliament to overturn the rule, slamming the CRTC for changing policy in the middle of its multi-year contract with Bell. Bell and the NFL launched a legal battle to try to overturn the rule. They argued the CRTC does not have the power to impose a rule on a single program and that the policy thwarts Canada’s international trade obligations. The federal court dismissed their case, but the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear an appeal. The court date is set for December.

It’s not clear if the USMCA will be ratified before the next Super Bowl. Nor is it clear whether the legal battle will continue.