NFL fans noticed something unusual at training camp this year: The quarterbacks were doing an awful lot of canoodling.
Within days of one another, cameras captured Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert getting cozy with fiancée and singer Madison Beer, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow sitting on the field with rumored girlfriend and model Olivia Ponton, and New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart sharing a "quiet moment" with girlfriend and influencer Marissa Ayers.
"Wtf is going on?" one X user asked. "Why are all these QBs hanging out with their girlfriends at practice? Or if this always happened then why is it just now always making the broadcast?"
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As it turns out, the pattern was not entirely a coincidence.
The viral moments are part of a larger content campaign designed to reach women and younger viewers, a source close to the NFL told Front Office Sports. The push falls under the league’s "helmets-off" strategy, which focuses on players’ personalities and personal lives rather than only what happens on the field.
"Whether it’s training camp, weekly practice or a major event like the Super Bowl, we look for authentic opportunities to highlight our players and the people who are part of their journey," Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s senior vice president of social and influencer marketing, told FOS. "The content is authentic, genuine and relatable, and that’s resonated strongly with women and young fans, who are key growth audiences for the NFL."
To be clear, the highlighting of players' relationships does not necessarily mean the affection itself was staged. The Chargers told FOS that the team had not planned any formal content around Beer specifically. What was coordinated was the league’s decision to place more of these relationships in front of viewers.
The business case is fairly obvious: Beer, Ponton, and Ayers collectively have more than 70 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, compared with the NFL’s combined 53 million. When the league reposted Beer and Herbert’s engagement photos, the Instagram post received more than 500,000 likes — roughly 10 times the engagement of an average NFL post. Women follow these women, and the NFL wants to capitalize on that interest.
The internet, however, had one small note for the league: Women can also just like football.
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The criticism is not necessarily that women dislike celebrity relationships, fashion, or gossip. Plenty of people clearly enjoy the content, and a relationship can absolutely be the reason someone first becomes curious about a sport. Research cited by FOS found that 49 percent of Gen Z fans have become interested in a sport or athlete because of viral content or something outside the game, including an athlete’s relationship.
The problem is presenting WAG content — an acronym for "wives and girlfriends" — as the content for women. Women are already a massive part of the NFL audience: A poll published last year found that 41 percent of American women considered themselves NFL fans.
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The financial incentive to keep that audience growing is enormous. The NFL generates an estimated $2.75 billion in retail sales from licensed consumer products each year, and attracting more women opens up new merchandise categories, brand partnerships, ticket buyers, and viewers whom advertisers want to reach. As one licensing expert told Front Office Sports, adding a demographic with disposable income gives the league "another gold mine to tap into."
Taylor Swift, of course, demonstrated how quickly attention surrounding a relationship can turn into business. Apex Marketing Group estimated that Swift generated nearly $1 billion in equivalent brand value for the NFL after she began dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — a phenomenon known as the "Swift Effect." Seen from that perspective, the league’s WAG strategy is not difficult to understand. But amplifying other football couples does not guarantee that the NFL can recreate "the pop culture moment that Taylor and Travis had," as one X user put it.
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Beer, Ponton, and Ayers bring tens of millions of their own followers, many of whom fall within the exact young female demographic the NFL wants to convert into regular viewers and consumers. If even a fraction begin watching games, buying jerseys, or following teams because of them, the campaign becomes very valuable.
The online backlash suggests the problem is not the NFL's commercial logic though, but the limited way it is applying it. Rather than investing primarily in better merchandise, women's perspectives on the sport, female creators, or access that treats women as knowledgeable fans, it risks falling back on the assumption that women need a romance plot to care about football at all.
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As Awful Announcing put it: "Remember when the NFL just made everything pink and called it a day for women? This is somehow even lazier."
Here's a piece of advice, from a life-long Pittsburgh Steelers fan: If the league truly wants to convert women into lifelong fans — and customers — it may need to offer them more than quarterbacks with girlfriends. Some of them, (breaking news!), are also interested in football.
from Mashable https://ift.tt/t1Hc4yO
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