National Football League sponsors and advertisers are facing the prospect of more uncertainty this season as COVID’s resurgence complicates marketing plans. But the league—which begins its regular season on Sept. 9—continues to prove its resilience by adding sponsors and commanding top TV ad dollars.

The situation is more stable than at this point last year when there were doubts about the league even completing a full season. The NFL made it through, of course. But advertisers had to curb sponsorship activities to account for empty stadiums while dealing with scheduling oddities that in some cases led to games played in unusual time slots after COVID-induced postponements—such as a Wednesday afternoon start time for a Steelers-Ravens game in November.

Brands will still spend big on the sport, which is by far the nation’s largest TV draw. Despite last season’s disruptions, marketers shelled out $5.4 billion in measured media across all NFL programming, including for the Super Bowl, according to Kantar. That is up from about $5 billion for the 2019-2020 season. But the messages and images that brands put in football-themed ads this season might have to account for COVID realities. 

“Nobody is in the position to pull the plug on whatever they have planned. However, I think they are having this conversation of ‘what if.’ It would be irresponsible not to,” says Nick Kelly, who spent years overseeing U.S. sports sponsorships for Anheuser-Busch InBev before departing earlier this year to become president of Charlotte’s Major League Soccer franchise. “If you are coming out with the ‘Welcome to the Stadium’ [message] and you are showing a bunch of people without masks and we are back in a state of masks, it would be a little bit tone-deaf.” 

Indeed, a new Ad Age-Harris Poll reveals that fans might punish brands that ignore COVID realities. The poll, conducted Aug. 6-9 among 1,667 U.S. adults, shows 61% of NFL fans saying marketers should not depict group activities in ads, such as tailgating or scenes of crowded stadiums. Respondents were more mixed on whether brands should promote vaccinations efforts in ads, with 48% of NFL fans saying they not should do so. (See more poll results at the bottom of this story.)

Kelly, who still regularly talks to NFL sponsors, adds that “I’ve got to assume almost every agency is advising their clients right now to be shooting two versions of everything—one with masked individuals, or socially distanced, and those that are a little bit more normal. The cost of starting over is probably too challenging.”

But the cost of sitting out of NFL programming might be even steeper. While ratings dipped last year, the league still delivers massive audiences. It accounted for 69 of the top 100 most-watched broadcasts in 2020, according to Sportico reporter Anthony Crupi. And NFL sponsorships work, according to the Ad Age-Harris Poll, which shows 61% of respondents saying they are more likely to buy from brands that sponsor their favorite sports teams.

Full stadiums?

Despite all the scheduling disruptions last season, total NFL hours viewed fell by less than 5%, according to Jeremy Carey, managing director at Optimum Sports, an Omnicom-owned sports marketing agency that represents dozens of NFL sponsors and advertisers. “I look at that and say ‘Wow, that is what they did with so many uncertainties last year.’” he says. “It speaks to the power of the [NFL] brand, it speaks to the power of the broadcast—and for us, it lets us know we can’t not be there.”

In another sign of strength, the league did not lose a single sponsor after last season and managed to add three new partners for the 2021-22 slate—FanDuel, Diageo and Cisco—while expanding deals with Caesars Entertainment and DraftKings, which are now designated as “official sports betting partners,” along with FanDuel. That gives the league 37 sponsors heading into the new season. And the deals are not slowing down even as COVID rises: Lexus on Wednesday announced a new multiyear deal with the Miami Dolphins and its home venue of Hard Rock Stadium that includes “significant branding presence at all stadium events.” 

See all the winners of Ad Age's 2021 Small Agency Awards here.

Last season, the league and individual teams raked in $1.62 billion in sponsorship revenue, up from $1.47 billion in 2019-2020, according to sponsorship consultancy IEG. New additions included Postmates, which joined in September 2020 as the league’s first “on-demand food delivery partner”—a category that gained steam in the pandemic. “While NFL continues to operate as a mass-reach platform for some of the usual suspects in sponsorship, it has quickly evolved as a marketing destination for new categories, lesser-known brands and new executions,” Peter Laatz, global managing director at IEG, stated earlier this year when the report was issued.

But the league and its teams had to get creative to satisfy sponsors that lost out on reaching fans in crowded stadiums. For instance, at the Super Bowl, where attendance was limited, sponsors got placement on LED signage that covered the first few rows of Raymond James Stadium.

“We reimagined everything,” says ​​Tracie Rodburg, the NFL’s senior VP for sponsorship management. “We really worked closely with our partners on finding the assets we could deliver,” she adds, including using ad inventory on its own NFL Network.

“Our goal this year, as the commissioner says, is to have full stadiums,” she says. “While there is still uncertainty going into this year, there was way more uncertainty last year.”

One wildcard for brands this season is a new rule stating that a team experiencing a COVID outbreak will forfeit a game if it cannot be rescheduled within the 18-week season. While that could bring more certainty that the season gets completed on time, the rule, if activated, would result in lost opportunities for brands to activate sponsorships at the home site of the canceled game.

What brands have planned

Most brands have yet to reveal their NFL ad or sponsorship plans for the season, including big spenders Pepsi and Verizon. Anheuser-Busch InBev, whose Bud Light brand is one of the league’s biggest sponsors, declined an interview request but issued a statement from Bud Light Marketing VP Andy Goeler describing its NFL campaign as “centered around celebrating fans no matter where they’re rooting on their favorite teams—whether that be from the comfort of their homes, watching at their favorite bar, or at their team’s stadium,” adding that “we remain ready to respond to the changing environment.”

Subway, which inked an NFL sponsorship deal in July 2020, is “working on a new creative campaign that taps into football culture, featuring some of the NFL’s incredible roster of talent,” Chief Marketing Officer Carrie Walsh said in a statement to Ad Age. “We are still planning for on-site activation this season, but are ready to pivot to virtual experiences as needed.”

DraftKings this week put out a new campaign called “The Feels,” which stars Martin Lawrence and dramatizes the emotions experienced by sports bettors by putting in human form thoughts and feelings like “logic” and “indecision.” The ads feature a man watching a game at home—not at a stadium.  

Asked if COVID influenced the approach, VP of Brand and Sports Marketing Michael Shonkoff in a statement said: “Perhaps our decision to focus on the at-home experience was done subconsciously as we recognize there having been a shift in consumption habits given the challenges presented by COVID. However, provided that DraftKings’ mobile app conveniently lends itself to gaming from the safety and comfort of home, the vision for an at-home ad spot was there from the start, further emphasizing DraftKings' mobility as a source of entertainment."

Other brands planning significant NFL ad buys include Coca-Cola Co.—which will tout its reformulated Coke Zero Sugar product—and Chevrolet, which confirmed it will again advertise during NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”

“Live sports continues to be one of the few places where you have a more guaranteed repeatable, scalable audience,” says Chevy Director of Marketing Steve Majoros. “The Olympics has been a tricky couple weeks here as far as ratings. But I think NFL is more predictable.”

Hyundai—which is entering its fourth season as a major sponsor of “Sunday Night Football” and also sponsors five individual teams—is “plowing ahead” with its plans, says Angela Zepeda, chief marketing officer at Hyundai Motor North America. The “NFL is really important to us, so we are going to continue with enthusiasm and hope that everything allows fans to come into the stadium. We haven’t heard anything differently at this point.”

The automaker’s team deals—which are with the Cardinals, Texans, Buccaneers, Eagles and Bears— often include showing vehicles off on stadium sites in partnership with local dealer groups. Zepeda concedes that local regulations could mandate masks and social distancing for its on-the-ground activations but adds that “everyone has gotten really good right now in how to pivot and accommodate.” 

One of her biggest anxieties, she says, is getting the NFL ads shot amid COVID challenges, including a custom content series in partnership with NBC. “That is something that keeps me up at night a little bit because we do still have a lot of creative to produce,” she says. “So far there are heavy regulations in place for any kind of production or set crew … But I don’t want to shut down all the way because that will be really bad. I want to get to an idea fast so we can start producing before anything does potentially go wrong.”

Contributing: Ann Christine Diaz

More results from the Ad Age-Harris Poll survey of NFL fans:

**36% plan to watch more games on TV this season

**4% plan to watch fewer games 

**40% say they will likely attend a game in-person

**35% say they will likely watch games at a very crowded bar

**69% say that vaccinations stations should be set up at sporting events

**73% say that given COVID spread, it is not safe for unvaccinated children to attend major sporting events

**66% say they prefer funny ads during NFL games

**42% say they prefer heartfelt ads during NFL games

**34% say they prefer nostalgic ads during NFL games

**7% say they prefer political ads during NFL games