Toyota is making a major marketing investment in the NFL, signing on as the league’s official automotive sponsor. The multi-year deal, announced today, fills a pricey opening that has been vacant since Ford departed as the NFL’s official truck sponsor in 2022. The league has not had a sponsor for cars since Hyundai failed to renew its deal after the 2019 season.

Toyota will sponsor both cars and trucks, marking the first time the NFL has unified both automotive segments since 2015, when General Motors ended a deal it had kept since 2001. The league could still pursue a separate luxury automotive sponsor, an NFL spokesman confirmed to Ad Age.

For Toyota, the deal marks a watershed moment—the Japanese automaker has never before held a leaguewide sponsorship for the NFL. But it has spent plenty on sports, including Nascar and Olympics sponsorships. It also sponsored the NBA for several years beginning in 2005.

Toyota and the NFL declined to share financial terms, including the exact length of the deal.

Toyota is not a stranger to the NFL: It already sponsors 11 individual NFL teams and holds the halftime sponsorship for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” in a deal that has been in place since 2006. Toyota, whose lead agency is Saatchi & Saatchi, has also been a regular Super Bowl advertiser (although it sat out this year’s game for the first time since 2017). 

The new sponsorship marks a significant uptick in its NFL investment, bringing new opportunities, but also new pressure.

“The NFL is the number one sports property in the U.S. with 205 million passionate fans,” David Christ, Toyota’s group VP and general manager, said in a statement. “This partnership provides us the opportunity to connect with fans through a wide array of NFL programs and platforms, allowing us to share our brand message and promote our vehicles to a diverse and highly engaged audience.”

Lessons from Hyundai

To take advantage of the deal, Toyota will have to spend heavily beyond just the sponsorship fees—at least that was the lesson Hyundai learned. During its four-year sponsorship tenure, some Hyundai dealers questioned its effectiveness, noting that so many other auto brands filled the airwaves during games, according to Automotive News’s coverage at the time.

“You can buy the sponsorship, and then if you don't have enough money to run enough TV commercials, you almost don't look like the sponsor,” then-Hyundai Motor America Chief Marketing Officer Dean Evans told the publication in 2019.

Christ in an interview said, “I really can't speak to how Hyundai under Dean's leadership executed. But I know our plans. And our plans are extensive.”

He added that Toyota’s sponsorship strategy is to “do fewer of them really well.” The automaker recently did a strategic evaluation of our sponsorship strategy,” he said, “and there were some sponsorships that we allowed to expire. None of them were at the level or the I would say depth of the NFL agreement.” He declined to name the deals it did not continue. 

Toyota’s designation as both truck and car sponsor could alleviate some of the pressure; Hyundai had to compete with Ford for attention. 

As of now, a luxury automotive NFL sponsorship does not seem imminent. But Tracie Rodburg, senior VP of sponsorship management at the NFL, in an interview suggested Toyota-owned luxury brand Lexus as a possibility. Asked if Lexus might be interested, Christ said: “At this time, there's nothing we have to announce regarding a partnership between Lexus and the NFL. Lexus marketing tends to focus on luxury automotive demographics, and I don't know off the top of my head, whether that aligns with the NFL or not, but it's certainly something that we will evaluate.”

It seems likely that the NFL deal will lead Toyota to return to the Super Bowl, although the brand declined to confirm its ad plans for the Big Game. Toyota Motor North America is currently searching for a new CMO after Lisa Materazzo left for Ford last month.

Christ said the Super Bowl ad decision is “more about what products we're preparing to launch than it is about feeling like we have to be on the Super Bowl.”

Toyota also seems poised to boost its experiential marketing presence, noting in a press release that “engaging fans in their environment has never been more critical. With the ability to activate at official NFL events, Toyota will aim to connect with consumers in an authentic way, enhancing their fan experience and driving Toyota brand loyalty.”

NFL sponsorship revenue

For the NFL, the Toyota deal will translate to even more money for the increasingly wealthy league, which is riding a TV ratings high, helped in part by the attention brought by Taylor Swift’s romance with Kansas City Chief Travis Kelce.

In the automotive category, Toyota was on “top on our list, especially with the focus that they have on their dealer groups,” Rodburg said, adding that the NFL deal can add to “what they're doing in the community already.”

The NFL’s sponsorship revenue haul last season hit a record $2.7 billion when combining individual team revenues with leaguewide deals, according to a report published earlier this year by SponsorUnited.

The league’s total sponsorship roster now includes 35 companies, including longtime partners PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Mars and Campbell Soup Co., in addition to newer sponsors such as Apple Music, which began sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show last season.

Rodburg said the league is actively searching for a sponsor in the pharmaceutical category. The deal would not be about promoting a specific medicine, but more about “really working with a corporate organization on community-focused (initiatives).”

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CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that this is Toyota's first sponsorship of any of the four major sports leagues in North America. The information was provided by Toyota.