• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, February 5, 2013

Super Bowl viewing dropped about 11% in Canada, but was still the second-highest total ever. The average 7.3 million viewers Sunday comes from a combination of the English-language broadcast on CTV and the French one on RDS.
 
Last year, the game drew 8.2 million. Bell Media, which owns the two stations, did say 18 million viewers (53.4% of the Canadian population) watched at least some of the game. Data cited is from BBM Canada; 91% of the average viewership took place on CTV.
 
Viewership Sunday peaked during Beyonce’s Pepsi-sponsored halftime show at about 9.4 million. The 11% decline this year is far greater than the falloff in the U.S.
 
While GM dropped out of the game in the U.S., it had a top-line sponsorship role in Canada -- as did Ford and Nissan. Labatt Breweries was the game’s presenting sponsor. Pepsi had announced plans to run a spot exclusively in Canada plugging Lay’s potato chips.
 
Sponsors running spots in the U.S. and Canadian broadcasts include BlackBerry, Subway, Volkswagen, Disney Studios and Wonderful Pistachios.
 
The game was streamed live for the first time this year on CTV’s Web site.