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For the second year running, big-budget U.S. commercials apparently lured millions of Canadians away from local Super Bowl broadcasts.

BCE Inc.-owned Bell Media attracted an average audience of 4.45 million viewers for the National Football League’s championship game on CTV, CTV Two and TSN2 on Sunday night, spokesman Scott Henderson said in an email Monday.

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While the number was stable as compared with the 4.47 million viewers in 2017, it was down 40 per cent from 7.32 million viewers in 2016 — the last broadcast before the federal regulator changed the rules to allow U.S. ads to air in Canada.

In 2017, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission banned simultaneous substitution — the practice of replacing U.S. ads with Canadian ones — during the Super Bowl.

The CRTC’s goal was to please consumers who wanted to see the flashy U.S. ads. Under the new policy, viewers still see Canadian ads if they choose to watch on a local station, but they can watch American commercials if they flip to NBC.