How The League's Super Bowl Spot Will Kick Off Its Centennial Celebrations

The NFL is kicking off its 100th-season celebrations with a Super Bowl spot featuring 1 fancy banquet, 50-plus football greats from the past and present, 3 of the sport’s female stars, 1 of the world’s top fortnite players and 1 epic, cake-crushing fumble. And Adweek was on set to capture the play by play.

- Doug Zanger

THE SUPER BOWL, WHICH WILL BE PLAYED FEB. 3 IN ATLANTA, is the NFL’s annual crown jewel and, arguably, the ad industry’s too. Last February, close to 120 million people watched the game in the U.S. across broadcast and digital platforms. But it’s not just about the action on the field. The commercials are among the most highly anticipated—and hyped—of the year.

And while the NFL itself always has an ad in the Big Game—last year’s Dirty Dancing homage featured New York Giants teammates Odell Beckham Jr. and Eli Manning and 2016’s heartwarming “Super Bowl Babies,” for example—this year, the stakes are higher. The NFL is kicking off a year’s worth of celebrations for its 100th season amid divisive issues like players taking a knee during the national anthem, the safety of the game (last summer, CBS News reported that more than $500 million in claims were approved as part of the NFL’s concussion settlement) and even which entertainers would be willing to play the halftime show. Earlier this month, a Louisiana attorney filed a suit against the league after a much-discussed missed call by a referee led to the Los Angeles Rams’ victory over the New Orleans Saints.

In 2015, in the wake of highly publicized cases of domestic violence involving some of its players, the NFL donated time to and partnered with No More, a coalition of groups fighting domestic violence and sexual assault. There was a buzzed-about PSA (by Grey, the league’s agency of record for a decade, which ended with 72andSunny’s win at the end of last year) addressing the issue, and subsequent No More PSAs that aired during the Big Game in both 2015 and 2016.

This time around, the league is taking an altogether different approach, pivoting away from controversy in the hope of changing the conversation.