The NFL's Super Bowl ad started on screen and ended live in the stadium

The NFL kicked off the Super Bowl festivities with a fun, freewheeling extended spot about a boy who makes a major play that began on his local football field and ended, in real life, at the Hard Rock Stadium in Florida. The ad from 72andSunny shows the boy catching the football during a pick-up game with his buddies in the park, but as he runs to make a touchdown, he tackles and hurdles over his opponents and heads all the way past the endline. “Where’s he going?” his teammates ask, as he leaves them in the dust and joyfully sprints through farmland, across country roads and onto gritty urban sidewalks. Turns out, he’s running all the way across the country, zipping by San Francisco, New Orleans and Tempe, Arizona, where he stops to reverently look up at the statue of the late NFL player and vet Pat Tillman at Sun Devil Football Stadium—and then he’s off again onto the streets of New York City. All throughout, onlookers cheer him on: “Take it to the house, kid!” they root, while a bevy of NFL vets, pros and other athletes guard him from obstacles until he finally arrives at his ultimate destination—Super Bowl LIV in Miami Gardens. There, fiction became reality when the boy burst onto the Hard Rock Statdium field to a roaring crowd and backed by the troop of kids who had also featured in the film. "Here's to the next 100," the spot's endline read, capping off the League's year-long celebration of its 100th anniversary that began in 2019. The spot, teased prior to the game, was a marked contrast to the League’s other Super Bowl spot that debuted before game day, a hard-hitting ad that took on police shootings and promoted the organization’s social justice efforts in the wake of the Colin Kaepernick controversy.

The NFL's Super Bowl ad started on screen and ended live in the stadium

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