Embracing a new Super Bowl era that sets the stage for diversity
It’s time for a Swift shake-up.
This article was written by Melissa Robertson and appeared in Campaign on the 9th February 2024.
The Super Bowl has historically been a culturally and semiotically male event. The blueprint of American football is undoubtedly built around the male gaze. Women in the sport take on the supportive role. They turn up on a Friday night to watch their college team. They are the cheerleaders. They are the mums who do the washing. They are the girlfriends who serve refreshments at half time.
And even when it comes to female participation, women can struggle to escape the influence and scrutiny of the male gaze. Just search “LFL football” on Google images if you don’t believe me (beware if you’re squeamish).
Decades of Super Bowl ad archives reflect this cultural divide. In 2015, the Victoria’s Secret Super Bowl campaign displayed women waiting in their lingerie for the game to end. The Carl’s Jr Burgers ad of the same year showed model Charlotte McKinney walking naked through a farmers’ market past on-looking men, before taking a bite out of a burger.
Mr Clean’s 2017 spot showed the sexualised Mr Clean being praised and rewarded for completing household chores, only further emphasising that this is typically the responsibility of females. Women have existed in this world for some time, but advertisers have historically made clear that the Super Bowl is a world owned, paid for and enjoyed by men.
The untapped potential of the female audience
But when we strip back these layers of culture, the raw facts tell a different story. Despite being sidelined for so long, women make up a huge audience segment. Data shows us that 75% of women in the US planned to watch the Super Bowl last year and roughly half of this year’s 115 million viewership in the US will be women. In fact women engage with the game more so than men, according to the “attention scale”.
After decades of this sizeable audience being neglected, a gradual cultural shift is finally taking place. Following sponsorships from multiple beauty brands in 2023 (E.l.f. Beauty, Fenty and Olehenriksen), NYX is making its Super Bowl debut this year to celebrate its 25th birthday, championing “the power of women” in a traditionally male-dominated space. Dove Beauty is also celebrating female body positivity this year through a campaign showing the effects of body insecurities on young girls in sports.
And it wouldn’t be an article on women and the Super Bowl without mentioning the female pop sensation Taylor Swift, who has overtaken cultural discourse around the game since she started dating Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce in September 2023.
Though recent conspiracy theories have attempted to resist the Swiftification of the game, the Taylor Swift effect is a powerful testament to the untapped potential of the female audience. Swift has contributed a whopping $330m of brand value to the Chiefs and NFL since September 2023, super-charging the recognition of female fandoms and their value to advertisers.
Looking beyond gender norms
But it shouldn’t take a Taylor Swift frenzy to truly recognise the watching, and spending, power of women. Female fandoms have offered a huge opportunity to the NFL for a long time, and it’s essential that rights holders finally take note. We need to see permanent attitude changes towards female audiences that can stand the test of time, regardless of the ups and downs of cultural phenomenons.
And it’s not just about recognition for female fans. We need to think beyond both male and female traditional categories represented in Super Bowl ad spots if we want to incite long-term change. It’s time to look away from beer, trucks, beauty and pop idols and towards the variety of audience profiles and interests that exist outside of polarised gender norms.
The Super Bowl is not just a game, but an opportunity for cultural evolution. The beauty of the ultimate entertainment stage is that it not only reflects culture but it has the power to change it too.
With things gradually beginning to shift, we now have an opportunity to start reshaping not just the world of sport advertising, but the world of sport itself. We quite rightly push for recognition and respect in women’s sports, but we can forget the imperative to reshape all sports through a more gender-neutral gaze. And it’s up to both rights holders and advertisers to drive that change (although I have a feeling it’s the latter who will step up to the plate first).
I don’t want to smash the patriarchy, but I would quite like it to chill out. Let’s aim for a future where sporting events like the Super Bowl can belong to everyone, regardless of gender.
Melissa Robertson is WACL member and chief executive of Dark Horses
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