Inside the Campaign: NFL Kickoff Ads Want More People to Join the Huddle

To continue its recent growth, the NFL can’t just say its game is for everyone: The league has to show it.

NFL marketers say they want the game to transcend the political climate of a U.S. election year, expand beyond the borders of its home market, and continue the progress it’s made among women, Latinx, younger audiences, and other communities that have been underrepresented among NFL fans.

So, in the league’s newest campaign, “This is Football Country,” the NFL and its creative partners at agency 72andSunny open the doors a bit wider with their sports marketing efforts and put more of an extended circle of new friends in front of the camera.

After featuring Mexican flag football quarterback Diana Flores and other women in football during its 2023 Super Bowl ad—which helped make flag football a sport at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics—the campaign’s opening 60-second spot introduces Makena Cook of Team USA and the Los Angeles Rams girls flag football team hyping up her teammates. It goes into the Shenandoah University Hornets locker room, where tackle player and safety Haley Van Voorhis gets her team ready in the huddle.

“Last year, a lot of people said, ‘Look at all the young women coming into the sport,’ and there was this [Taylor] Swift effect,” said Matt Turnier, creative director at 72andSunny. “Especially with this campaign, there’s already so many amazing stories of young women being part of the sport that maybe just haven’t been discovered by the world yet. It wasn’t just last year. This has been happening for a while.”

The campaign also brings back the Lahinaluna high school football team, the NFL’s honorary captains at Super Bowl 58 in the wake of devastating fires in Hawaii, to make viewers “remember who we are and who we represent.” It holds a night scrimmage for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers USA Wheelchair Football League team, partially funded by the NFL’s Salute to Service initiative for service members, veterans, and their families.

There’s still the “helmets-off” approach to NFL players and alumni that NFL CMO Tim Ellis and 72andSunny have been using since their NFL 100 Super Bowl debut collaboration in 2019, with the Dallas Cowboys’ DeMarcus Lawrence, the Houston Texans’ Stefon Diggs, the Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett, and recently retired Philadelphia Eagles player Jason Kelce and his wife, Kylie.

But this year’s campaign also brings even more love for U.S. fans, with a Saquon Barkley fan’s new Eagles jersey drawing gasps from her New York Giants-loving family; a look at a hospital that’s full of baby Steelers fans in Conemaugh, Pa.; and a field of hit-dispensing youth football moms in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

In addition, individual vignettes within the main ad are broken up into 15-second spots featured throughout the season.

“Part of the helmets-off strategy is not only to showcase our players as human, but it’s also to make the league approachable and inclusive,” said Marissa Solis, the NFL’s svp of global brand and consumer marketing. “This campaign is amazing because everyone is a part of the game. No matter where you are, who you are, you see this spot, and you can see yourself somewhere in there.”

But the aperture of the league’s marketing efforts is incrementally expanding beyond its home fields.

Continuing the exploration of the league’s Global Markets Program that began in the league’s most recent Super Bowl ad centered on its facilities in Ghana, “This is Football Country” follows YouTube creator Deestroying’s 1ON1 football series to Japan. It checks in on local players in Brazil just ahead of the NFL’s latest International Game in September at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo between the Eagles and the Green Bay Packers. With the league playing three games this year in London (Oct. 6, Oct. 13, Oct. 20) and another in Munich (Nov. 10), expanded global reach is a priority for a campaign that jumps between Brazil, Hawaii, Florida, Japan, Mexico, and New York.

“We’re grabbing things that are authentically happening in the sport, not just creating moments for the sake of a commercial,” said Jason LaFlore, creative director at 72andSunny. “We’re trying to infuse actual football culture into the ads that you’re seeing out there, so whether it’s women playing, people playing in Japan, or people playing all over the country, it’s all about just trying to show the inclusivity of football itself and how it reaches a little bit of everything.”

Tackling growth

The biggest obstacle to the NFL seeking a larger audience is that, at least in the U.S., there is no audience larger than the NFL’s.

“Our fan base has been surging now for several years, and what’s exciting is that what’s driving that growth is women, young people, and Latinos,” said NFL CMO Tim Ellis. “Those are the three demographic segments that we have been targeting consistently for the last several years, so the bottom line is that the strategy is working.”

According to Nielsen Live+7 ratings, the NFL accounted for 14 of the top 15 broadcasts last year and nearly half of the Top 100. Narrow that focus to same-day ratings, and only the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a State of the Union address join the NFL among the year’s Top 50 broadcasts. Among sports broadcasts, the 19.07 million viewers who tuned in for the Ohio State-Michigan game in November—the most-watched non-NFL sports broadcast of the year—wouldn’t have cracked the Top 50 NFL airings.

Last season’s NFL playoffs averaged 38.5 million viewers per game and were the most-watched on record. The 123.4 million people who watched Super Bowl 58 across multiple platforms were the biggest U.S. television audience since an average of 150 million people watched the first moon landing in 1969.

Globally, 62.5 million people outside the U.S. watched the most recent Super Bowl, up 10% from a year earlier. In Mexico, where the audience of 8.7% was a 5% increase from a year earlier, YouGov found that the NFL was the most popular U.S. league (among 32%), just ahead of the NBA (30%). In the U.K., where 1.2 million Super Bowl viewers was an 18% jump from 2023, YouGov noted that the 9% who called the NFL their favorite U.S. league nearly doubled the second-place NBA (5%).

The kickoff campaign, in multiple ways, builds from that momentum.

It uses 72andSunny’s rapid, football-derived motion that’s become a staple of its Super Bowl ads and carried it to a season-opening spot that—in 2023 with Keegan Michael Key discussing league storylines—was once more conversational. It links the league’s messages from the past and moves its mission forward with speed that suggests interest in more than incremental gains.

“While we tend to be known for having that kind of motion in our spots, what helps is going back to the authenticity of it to find these new ways in,” LaFlore said. “You have the Ghana conversation from the Super Bowl, and this year, for the season, we have this conversation of inclusivity throughout football entirely, not just international or women, but different people of different abilities, and all of that helps to bring a freshness to the work.”