Will Canadian fans of big-budget, American Super Bowl ads get to see them while the NFL championship game is played next February, or will that be ruled out of bounds after just two seasons?
Canada’s new trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, known as USMCA, obliges Ottawa to get rid of a two-year-old rule that prohibits cable and satellite companies from blocking U.S. signals during the event.
The rule was put in place in response to public feedback that many Canadians preferred to see the American version of the Super Bowl broadcasts.
But fans of Canadian advertisers are hoping domestic ads will muscle out their competition for the first time since 2016, the last year that simultaneous substitution of U.S. signals was allowed during the Super Bowl.
Until Sunday, when Canadian and American politicians agreed on revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Bell Media had failed to restore rules that allowed it to sell Super Bowl time without U.S. competition.
Then came USMCA, specifically Annex 15-D in the chapter covering cross-border trade in services, which binds Canada to rescind a special Super Bowl provision established by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
So far, the government hasn’t said whether it will overrule the CRTC soon enough for Bell Media to score with advertisers ahead of the Feb. 4, 2019, Super Bowl game.
Asked what Bell Media is telling advertisers, spokesman Scott Henderson replied in an email: “We continue to be open for business.”
Judy Davey, vice-president of media policy for the Association of Canadian Advertisers, which has been a Bell ally and intervenor in at the Federal Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada, said in an interview that she’s hopeful.
“We’d like to see it implemented ASAP so that Canadian commercials can be seen in 2019.”
