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.
