I didn't originally think much of last week's CRTC ruling until seeing a post on lionbackers.com about it. The ruling has made it that, beginning in 2017, the Canadian rights holder of the Super Bowl will no longer be able to substitute their signal for the American one so that Canadians will finally be able to have access to those precious Super Bowl commercials. Of course, Bell Media is not happy about this and says that it will cost them lots of money which makes sense as they probably make more from Super Bowl ads than they do from Grey Cup ads. However, with far fewer Canadians watching the Super Bowl on Bell Media, the overall package for the NFL becomes much less valuable here in Canada.
I am not sure how much Bell Media pays for the NFL rights in Canada but, given that they promote the NFL much more heavily than the CFL, I am assuming that it is a fair bit. Perhaps the spin-off effect from all of this is that we will see CTV/TSN's coverage of the CFL and NFL become more balanced starting with the next TV contract or CTV may even opt out of showing NFL games.
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