Sodastream system. Photo: Wikipedia

The USA unit of the Israel-based SodaStream International announced on Tuesday that it is buying a commercial during this year’s Super Bowl. The game is the most watched sporting event annually in the United States, and the National Football League (NFL) claims that the game can be seen by nearly 1 billion people worldwide.

“The Super Bowl is the best place to get everyone at one time. It’s a big soda-drinking audience. Coke and Pepsi are key sponsors of that event; Pepsi is the sponsor of the half-time show…The time has come for SodaStream to join their ranks on an equal footing and bring this message of a smarter, easier and healthier way to enjoy soda than what people are doing right now by spending a lot of money on all that packaged soda with bad ingredients,” Yonah Lloyd, Chief Corporate Development and Communications Officer for the company told the Jerusalem Post.

The SodaStream home soda maker system, which is billed as an alternative to bottled soft drinks, has captured the attention of the public with its controversial advertisements. The UK recently banned one of its advertisements, which can be viewed below, saying that it “denigrated” other sodas. The company has been running ads in the country that feature a black screen in protest of the ban.

The commercial promotes the SodaStream system as environmentally friendly. Bottles are shown exploding in stores and warehouses each time someone uses a SodaStream machine. “If you love the bubbles,” an announcer says, “set them free.”

The New York Times reports that the Super Bowl ad will ” echo the themes of the ‘love the bubbles’ commercial but express them in a different way.”

According to the New York Times, CBS said in November that it had sold about 95 percent of the commercial time that it planned to run during Super Bowl XLVII, at an average price of around of $3.8 million for 30-seconds of airtime.

The banned SodaStream advertisement can be viewed below: