How the NFL’s Super Bowl Ad Drove Flag Football Fever and Attracted Brands to the Sport

Handing off the NFL’s Super Bowl commercial to flag football scored huge growth for the sport, but it took a whole team of athletes, coaches, schools, leagues and brand partners to push it over the goal line.

Back in February, the National Football League and its creative agency partners at 72andSunny gave roughly 115 million viewers a look at Mexican flag football quarterback Diana Flores as she evaded league players’, celebrities’ and even her own mother’s attempts to take her flag.

“It’s about telling the right stories, it’s about these incredible women athletes, it is about our youth and bringing in young fans … it really is about everyone that we’re trying to bring into the fold,” NFL svp of global marketing, Marissa Solis, told Adweek in February.

It was the right ad at the right time. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), flag football participation at schools in the U.S. increased from roughly 6,600 players in 2010 to nearly 22,000 this year. Almost 21,000 of those players are girls, up from 16,000 just last year and 11,000 prior to the pandemic in 2019. 

The ad didn’t air by coincidence. In 2021, Nike announced a $5 million multiyear grant initiative with the NFL to provide one-time $100,000 donations of uniforms, socks, sports bras and accessories to state athletic associations offering girls flag football. As all 32 NFL clubs partnered with local flag football programs through the NFL FLAG program, brands including Visa and Gatorade lent their support nationally and regionally. 

“It was a great commercial and Diana did a great job,” said Roman Oben, who played in the NFL for more than a decade and now serves as the league’s vp of football development strategy.

This year, the league hosted its first All 32 Summer Invitational tournament in Washington, D.C., featuring flag football affiliates of every NFL club. With memorabilia from Flores’ Super Bowl flag football ad now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the NFL followed it up with another spot during fall flag football season featuring U.S. flag football quarterback Vanita Krouch, Minnesota Vikings wide receiver and NFL flag football ambassador Justin Jefferson, YouTube fixture Deestroying, hip-hop star Quavo and NFL alum Michael Vick and his daughter Jada—a flag football quarterback who received a full scholarship to play at Reinhardt University in Atlanta.

The NFL’s Super Bowl campaign made a difference for flag football, but it was one big play in a dense and formidable playbook.

“What that [ad] opened people’s eyes to is not that ‘Oh, this sport is available,’ it’s ‘Oh my god, it’s already at this level of competitiveness and skill and expertise and it’s happening all around us,” said Jesse Linder, vp of community relations for the New York Jets.

A team effort

The NFHS noted that roughly 1.2 million more boys than girls played high school sports in 2023, with the 1 million boys who play tackle football comprising much of that divide. 

Nike and the NFL have targeted that “play gap” by hosting girls flag football “11-on” events through NFL clubs in local markets and bringing girls into its Elite 11 quarterback program. The company serves as the presenting sponsor for Florida’s girls’ high school flag football state championships and, this year, hosted its second Kickoff Classic event featuring girls high school flag football teams at its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.

“At Nike, our ambition is to be her biggest champion — by growing women’s sport and building a better game,” said Jay Paavonpera, senior director of North America communications at Nike.

One of the teams featured at this year’s Kickoff Classic, Willowbrook High School in the Chicago suburbs, were the 2022 Illinois state champions from the Gustavo Silva’s Chicago Bears flag football program. As manager of the Bears’ youth football and community programs, Silva watched the team partner with Chicago Public Schools in 2021 and immediately launch 22 girls teams with 400 athletes.

“Going back to when I interviewed for the job, I felt that one area that we needed to move in was in the space of growing the game with girls,” Silva said.

At the Bears’ flag football Jamboree in August, Diana Flores attended along with 36 teams of more than 700 players. As of this fall, more than 10% of schools in the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) have adopted girls flag football, leading Silva and the Bears to petition the IHSA for its official sanctioning as a varsity sport by fall 2024.

“I love it because, at first, you’re kind of like that voice in the woods that not everyone can hear, but now it’s become so loud that now that voice can no longer be ignored,” Silva said.

One of Nike’s $100,000 grants went to Bears-affiliated flag football programs in 2022. Gatorade helped fund the Jamboree, and works with NFL FLAG to provide club-affiliated flag football teams with sports drinks and equipment. 

Visa has been an NFL partner for 25 years, but is also an official partner of the Bears’ flag football efforts. It supports statewide varsity sanctioning and sponsors the Bears’ Girls Flag Football Tournament of Champions and NAIA Showcase for graduating athletes.

“When the NFL shared their girl’s flag football strategy and plans, we knew we had to get involved,” said Mary Ann Reilly, Visa’s CMO of North America,

Game changer

Reilly mentioned that Visa is working with other NFL teams it sponsors individually—including the New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers—as well as the NFL as a whole to expand its support for girls flag football programs. 

It’s already teamed with the New York Jets as the presenting sponsor of the “Jets Girls Flag High School Coach of the Week Game Changer” award, which donates $2,000 to the winning coach’s program.

The Jets started their girls flag football program with eight teams in New Jersey put together during a pandemic-forced Zoom call in early 2021. By just its third year, the Jets have 110 teams and 1,000 athletes spread out over six conferences throughout New Jersey, Long Island and New York’s Hudson River Valley. The Jets hosted unofficial New York and New Jersey state championships at team headquarters in Florham Park, New Jersey, and its New Jersey state champions from Irvington just played in Nike’s Kickoff Classic.

“What’s fueled the growth is not just the school’s appetite or even the girls’ appetite to play the sport, but it’s the community to get behind the sport that the parents, the other coaches, the other students that come out and support the girls playing high school flag football,” the Jets’ Linder said.

Future New York champions won’t come through the Jets facility, as the state’s high school governing body earlier this year made it the first in the nation to recognize girls flag football as a championship varsity sport. New York gets its first sanctioned title game in 2024.

New recruits

This year, the Jets also teamed with the Bears to create a 12-team girls flag football league among schools in the United Kingdom. Roughly, 130 athletes took part in the league’s inaugural season, and the league champion from Ealing Fields was honored at a Buffalo Bills-Jacksonville Jaguars game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Oct. 8.

“Flag creates opportunities for the lowest cost, the lowest barrier to entry,” Oben said, noting the sport’s lack of expensive equipment or specialized facilities.

The Jets’ Linder noted that the game’s accessibility is drawing new sponsors as well. The team’s EmpowHER flag football docuseries spent its first two seasons sponsored by Nike before yielding to Audi in 2023. Like the NFL’s commercial with Flores, the series wasn’t necessarily showing sponsors something new—just what their role in it could be.

“All of our corporate partners that saw this just wanted to be a part of it, and [wondered] how they could help grow the game with us,” Linder said.