In the sports-mad United States, football casts the longest shadow. Not to be confused with soccer, American football is the nation’s most popular sport by a wide margin. A 2025 poll from S&P Global found that 51% of surveyed adults watched football.
Meanwhile, the second-most-watched team sport, basketball, checked in at 31%. TV ratings are consistently sky high, with the 2026 NFL Super Bowl LX drawing the highest peak audience in television history with nearly 138 million viewers. It’s no wonder, then, that football is a major draw for brands seeking to advertise in front of large audiences.
It could be on TV or the web, at the venue, a product tie-in, or anything in between. And the brands are far from the classic cars-and-beer standards that everyone stereotypically associates with gridiron advertising. That brand diversity was reflected in Newsweek’s recent list of the Most Loved Brands by Football Fans, developed in partnership with Plant-A Insights Group, which revealed fans’ wide-ranging affinities for the brands that are a part of the game day experience in one way or another.
But just as football transcends demographics, so too do the brands that connect to the sport and its supporters. For example, Bath & Body Works may be an unlikely brand for football fans at a glance, but its iconic Football Season candle has built a solid fan base of its own—and demonstrated football’s massive reach in the process. Nor could they have foreseen the sport’s international presence or its multi-platform appeal, from streaming services to video games.
That global reach gives Visa new ways to engage fans through a shared passion.” While the NFL is the American football kingpin, college football also draws huge audiences—and their own attention from blue-chip brands. For example, Samsung recently took part in a campaign to honor hall of fame ESPN broadcaster Lee Corso on the occasion of his retirement, leveraging social media to help find the right send-off. We partnered with [Corso’s] ESPN colleagues Rece Davis and Desmond Howard to invite fans on social to provide suggestions of what should go in his ultimate fan-worthy setup as he entered his next era, moving from College GameDay desk to TV at home.” As marketers know, football isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
It appeals to a wide swath of fans regardless of race or politics. Brands know that and will be here to stay as well.
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