Entertainment Book Goes Bankrupt. Really, Yes.
For decades, the Entertainment Book was how Canadians saved money on restaurants, hotels, car rentals, and attractions. Then it was gone. Here is what happened — and what replaced it.
What Was Entertainment Book?
If you were a Canadian deal-seeker in the 1990s or 2000s, you knew Entertainment Book. It was a physical coupon book — sold annually, typically for $25–35 — stuffed with buy-one-get-one offers, percentage discounts, and flat savings on restaurants, movie tickets, hotel stays, car rentals, and local attractions.
The model had been running since the 1960s. At its peak, Entertainment Publications (the US parent company) sold millions of books across North America. In Canada, the books were organized by city and region. You bought the Halifax book, the Toronto book, or the Vancouver book. Workplaces, schools, and community organizations sold them as fundraisers. It was ubiquitous.
For a specific type of Canadian consumer — one who ate out frequently, traveled regularly, and was willing to carry the book and remember to use it — the annual purchase paid for itself many times over. A single two-for-one dinner at a mid-range restaurant covered the cost of the book.
The Bankruptcy: What Actually Happened
Entertainment Publications filed for bankruptcy in the United States in 2012, restructured, and ultimately wound down its Canadian operations in 2013. The shutdown was not sudden — the company had been struggling for years as its core business model eroded from multiple directions simultaneously.
Starting around 2010, Groupon, LivingSocial, Dealfind, Teambuy, and a wave of Canadian daily deals platforms offered the same basic value proposition — a deeply discounted offer to try a local business — but digitally, in real time, without buying a physical book up front. The restaurant discount that once lived in the Entertainment Book now showed up as a Groupon deal you could buy for $20 on your phone.
The Entertainment Book required you to physically carry it, find the right page, present it to the server or hotel clerk, and remember it existed. Consumers increasingly expected deals to be on their phones — searchable, scannable, and available at the moment of purchase, not pre-loaded in a book you bought six months ago.
As daily deals platforms emerged, merchants had a new way to run promotions without going through Entertainment Book's annual publishing cycle. The book's merchant network thinned. Books that once had 300 relevant local offers shrank to 150 — and consumer willingness to pay for them dropped proportionally.
Hotel and car rental deals — historically a strong category in Entertainment Book — migrated to brand loyalty programs (Marriott Bonvoy, Hertz Gold, Aeroplan). Frequent travelers found they got better deals through direct loyalty relationships than through a coupon book.
The Irony: Daily Deals Didn't Win Either
The companies that appeared to kill Entertainment Book — Groupon, LivingSocial, Dealfind, Teambuy — did not survive the decade in their original form either. By 2015, most of the Canadian daily deals platforms had shut down, merged, or pivoted dramatically. Groupon still exists but is a fraction of its 2011 peak. The model that disrupted Entertainment Book was itself disrupted.
The structural problem was the same in both cases: the merchant math didn't work long-term. Whether you were selling a coupon book for $30 or a Groupon voucher at 60% off, the businesses running the promotions were often losing money on the customers they attracted — who came for the discount and rarely returned at full price.
What the Canadian Deals Landscape Looks Like in 2026
The Entertainment Book era ended. The daily deals era ended. What replaced both is more fragmented, more digital, and — for consumers who understand it — capable of generating larger savings than either predecessor.
- Physical coupon book, annual purchase
- Local restaurants, hotels, car rentals
- Savings in the $100–300/year range
- Required carrying the book and remembering to use it
- Worked best for frequent diners and local travelers
- Annual billing vs monthly: 15–20% savings on every subscription
- AI tools, VPNs, software, cloud storage
- Savings in the $300–600 CAD/year range for typical digital spend
- Structural — works automatically once you switch plans
- Works best for anyone paying for digital services in USD
The category shift is significant. Entertainment Book was about physical Canadian businesses offering local discounts. Today's equivalent savings opportunity is in digital subscriptions — tools billed in USD that cost Canadians more than they need to, paid more often than they need to, with foreign transaction fees that most bank cards silently add on top.
The consumer who saves $400 CAD per year today is not the one clipping physical coupons. It is the one who switched their AI tool and VPN subscriptions to annual billing, uses a no-FX credit card for USD charges, and knows when promotional pricing windows occur.