The NFL’s Youth Focused Social Marketing
This year's NFL season is already in full swing with over 17 million Americans spending their Sunday, Monday, and Thursday nights glued to their TV screens watching the games. But, there is a different screen that the NFL is focusing on this year – the phone screen. The NFL hopes to become the most youth-focused league in the world and it starts with their new marketing strategy. To achieve this goal, they will need to heavily count on their social media.1
The NFL is using a well-rounded strategy to reach a broad demographic of the younger generation (mainly gen-z). From fashion influencers on Instagram to co-streaming NFL games with gaming content creators on Twitch, the NFL has created an all-encompassing social media presence to target a wide variety of the younger demographic2. The connection to Twitch has come about due to the new partnership the NFL formed with Amazon to exclusively stream games on Thursday nights. The main focus of these campaigns is to have a “helmets off” strategy with their players to highlight them and their hobbies off the field. This humanization of NFL players is designed to connect fans on a greater level. As Ian Trombetta, NFL SVP of Social Influence and Influencer Marketing puts it, “it’s not just football highlights all the time, it’s a diversification of content that we’re pushing across the board, which is important to our strategy as a whole”3 .
The NFL swiftly opened the season with many of these new programs. One of the largest so far was the announcement of Rihanna as the LVII Halftime Show performance. The campaign began with Rihanna posting a photo of her holding an NFL football with her signature tattoo showing. Along with posting this, the NFL rebranded their Twitter bio to “National Fenty League '' that makes a nod to the artist’s last name and is the name of her beauty and clothing brand. The post went truly viral and many brands such as Popeye and Dairy Queen created mimic posts.
Another main marketing push for the League is its TikTok platform. Trombetta claimed that the account is the fastest-growing platform that the NFL currently has. One of their largest boosts is during game day when they have the highest amounts of content hitting their platforms. All of their accounts are working in unison to drive the message of what is happening on the field. The most active accounts during game day are Instagram and Tik Tok which are the most popular among their target demographic. When the Tik Tok is not posting highlights, the account posts hype videos featuring stars of the platform interacting with their players. This again goes about the community-building aspect; having players directly interact with an audience on this platform helps make more of a personal connection.
Even early in the season, the NFL’s new social media-focused approach has seemed to be working. On the opening weekend, their Instagram received 91% more unique users compared to last year. Then on Twitter, they also saw record numbers for video views and overall unique viewers of the account. Overall, it looks like the NFL will be moving more of its marketing budget to focus on the expansion of its social media base. With this all-out blitz in place, it looks like the NFL will easily grow its fanbase for years to come!
