Canadians will once again get U.S. Super Bowl commercials this Sunday if they watch the big game on a U.S. station (NBC).
In 2016, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) banned Simultaneous Substitution, which allows Bell/CTV to replace the U.S. commercials with their own in order to gain more ad revenue.
This was a disaster for the Canadian sports stations carrying the big-game who saw a huge drop in viewership. To try and combat this, CTV, CTV Two and TSN2 are offering more than $300,000 worth of prizes if you watch the game on their station (with Canadian commercials of course). They’ve also gone one step further by creating a website where views can view U.S. commercials prior to game.
Bell Media has been challenging the ruling since 2016 but the ban still remains in place this year.
