YouTube wants to scare up excitement from younger fans for this year’s NFL season.
This week, YouTube premiered a new spot ahead of the NFL season, which kicks off today, as part of its campaign to promote NFL Sunday Ticket, the platform’s NFL subscription package. The spot stars football pros and popular content creators in a hidden camera prank scenario.
In a two-and-a-half-minute video, YouTube showcased football super fans and prospective homeowners attending a staged open house in Los Angeles. With a setup reminiscent of MTV’s Punk’d, YouTuber creators Haley Kalil and Joe Mele worked behind the scenes to orchestrate football players and sports commentators bursting through a fake wall and surprising the unsuspecting fans.
In the final surprise, former Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens tight end Shannon Sharpe appears to greet the fans, giving them a free subscription to YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket.
Wes Harris, marketing director for YouTube, said the idea for the spot came from wanting to capture the joy of watching football at home and “quite literally” bringing the excitement of football into people’s living rooms.
The strategy of this year’s campaign, which Harris said is one of the most social-heavy and social-first campaigns he’s worked on, was to reach young fans where they are watching sports.
“We know that creators and influencers are such a big part of how younger fans follow football and the NFL,” Harris told ADWEEK. “YouTube plays a big role in that because it’s our creators that are developing the ancillary content behind-the-scenes, analysis, punditry, football projection, or fantasy football projection.”
Tapping into YouTube’s creators for the sports-inspired video made sense for Harris. After all, a Deloitte study from last year found that 90% of Gen Z fans use social media to consume sports content.
Meanwhile, when it came to collaborating with Sharpe, he said it was a natural fit given the football star’s background as a creator and podcast host.
“He also comes with the legitimacy and the credibility of being an NFL legend, so we wanted someone to anchor the spot from a credibility standpoint and provide the surprise and delightful moment,” Harris said. “We didn’t just want to scare people. We wanted them to have a moment of levity and joy at the end of seeing an NFL legend.”
Meanwhile, Kalil worked previously as part of the platform’s creator campaign last year, also attending Super Bowl LVIII with YouTube.
