At first glance it looks like a mismatch but the CFL is actually holding its own against the NFL juggernaut.

At first glance it seems far fetched to think that an eight team league made up of Canadian football players and aspiring and former NFLers could compete and even out-duel the sports-license-to-print-money-conglomerate otherwise known as the National Football League but it’s true. It’s the ultimate David and Goliath story.  In Canada, the CFL’s Grey Cup game competes with and in many years draws higher ratings than the NFL’s Super Bowl.  This year the NFL’s big game drew a combined viewership of 4.183 million households (3.367M from Global & 816,000 from French-Language RDS) vs. a combined viewership of 4.01 million (3.2M from Global & 810,000 from RDS) for the BC Lions – Montreal Alouettes Grey Cup showdown. That’s only a difference of 170,000 or roughly the amount of attempts it takes Nate Robinson to complete a move at the Slam Dunk contest. Prior to the last two years the CFL’s Grey Cup had a run where it was getting more viewers than the NFL.

One note to consider, the stats quoted for the Super Bowl’s audience need to be prefaced by the fact that the ratings don’t take into account the Canadians who tune into the HD American feeds which are free from Global’s intervention.

The question I have is: shouldn’t we be shocked that these numbers are so close? Not to knock the Canadian game but there’s no bigger single North American sporting event bigger than the Super Bowl.  On hype alone you have to think that the Super Bowl draws a huge casual viewer base; for instance there’s a collection of people that tune in for all the periphery events like the half-time show and big commercials. Well they tune in for the commercials if they have the American feed and not the Global feed where they sell their own Canadian ad time and under CRTC’s guidelines have the freedom to alter up to 10% of the original feed. My point is that the mere extravagance of the Super Bowl is bound to draw more casual observers who normally don’t follow the sport than the vanilla presentation of the CFL Grey Cup.

The way I see it the viewership for the CFL and NFL big games breaks down as follows: you have your die-hard football fans, your overall league fans, specific team fans, general sports fans and finally you have casual fans.

Clearly the local support and following of each CFL team is one area where the Canadian game has a greater advantage over the NFL and it thus has a major bearing on the solid Grey Cup ratings. Without the presence of a Canadian NFL team each Canadian city is left without a de facto team to support. Certainly border teams like the Seattle Seahawks, Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions enjoy some element of built-in Canadian fans bases; for the most part support for the other 29 NFL clubs comes sporadically and evenly across the rest of the country.

So if we’re doing the math, let’s say it’s a saw off between the extra casual viewers that tune in for the Super Bowl and the added viewers the CFL gets from local team support. This leaves us with a pool of viewership from the league fans (CFL & NFL), die-hard football fans and the general sports fans.  As a NFL junkie, it’s no contest to me which is the better viewing experience. The NFL represents the highest quality of football and possesses the greatest collection of individual talent. Watching the exploits of Ladainian Tomlinson, Peyton Manning, Devin Hester and Shawne Merrimann on a weekly basis is a thrill onto its own. In addition, the sheer game presentation of the NFL is vastly superior. The CFL just recently added the virtual first down line when it has been an institution south of the border for several years. The NFL offers endless camera angles: super slow mo, cable cam, umpire cam, etc, while the CFL battles with the decision to introduce video review and thus incur the extra costs needed for all the necessary cameras needed to make instant replay possible. While I understand the bells and whistles have no bearing on the on-field product it significantly enhances the fan viewing experience.

While we debate the ratings of the Grey Cup vs. the Super Bowl perhaps the bigger question should be raised of what the other 8.5-9 million Canadian households are watching during this time? That’s nearly 70% of Canadian TV homes that are ignoring the biggest sporting events of the year. Pretty remarkable. It’s even more remarkable when you consider that CSI was the top-rated Canadian program on a single network during Super Bowl week. Perhaps if the NFL had just aired footage of the festivities and parties that occurred during the week leading up to the big game in South Beach, they would have fulfilled the apparent Canadian thirst for programs focused on shady dealings with hookers and drug dealers.