Canada's CTV to Live-Stream Super Bowl, NFL Playoff Games Online

TORONTO – Canadian broadcaster CTV is teaming up with the NFL to live-stream Super Bowl XLVII to its online users.

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The exclusive deal will see CTV.ca simulcast CTV’s conventional TV broadcast of the Super Bowl and NFL playoff games, starting this weekend with live streaming of the divisional match-ups.

The online play will be geo-gated, and feature the same Canadian commercials seen on the CTV broadcast, not the high-profile American commercials from the CBS feed.

“This complementary coverage ensures Canadians won’t miss a second of the action,” said Phil King, president of CTV programming and sports.

CTV is following the lead CBS, which started live streaming the Super Bowl last year, and will do so again this year.

The deal is far more to the NFL’s liking than in 1996 when the pro football league and the NBA brought a crippling lawsuit against iCraveTV, a Toronto-based website run by owner William Craig that threatened to illegally broadcast a grainy U.S.-border station feed of the Super Bowl game.

The sport leagues’ lawsuits, combined with added legal action from the major Hollywood studios, eventually forced iCraveTV out of business before it could live stream the Super Bowl without securing permission from the rights-holders, or offering compensation.

Fast forward to 2013 and CTV will also provide radio and mobile coverage of Super Bowl XLVII and the league playoffs, via its Bell Mobile TV service.