As a Gen Z child, the Super Bowl meant staying up late on a school night and watching the Doritos commercial competition. Now everyone I know is worried about losing their $600 bet on the Eagles and which songs Kendrick Lamar will perform.
Did the Super Bowl become significant to us because we grew up, or because the Super Bowl tailored to Gen Z?
The four biggest components of the event are the actual game (obviously), the sports betting, the halftime show, and the commercials.
The game hasn’t changed – too much– so the other factors must have.
The branding part of it
Let’s start with the commercials released thus far. They feature many Gen Z celebrities, Sydney Sweeney, Charli XCX, Barry Keoghan, and also our romanticized celebrity crushes from the ‘90s – Matthew McConaughey, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Matt Damon.
Apart from all the notable people featured, the ideas and plots of most advertisements are riddled with Gen Z themes – like the one for Stella Artois, in which soccer star David Beckham learns he has a twin named Dave Beckham who turns out to be Matt Damon. They don’t have much in common, but both drink Stella Artois.
This pinpoints Gen Z humor perfectly, not all that thought out or witty, and you can’t quite explain what’s funny about it. What can you expect when we were raised in the generation of comedy movies where Will Ferrell randomly screaming was the peak moment in every blockbuster?
The more serious commercials also seem to prioritize appealing to Gen Z. Dove, in its usual theme of combating female propensity for low self-esteem and body image issues, pictures a young girl running. Choosing a younger girl immediately connects the message more to younger generations, as opposed to their older models of showing many middle-aged women in all white clothes. The act of her running also feels more active and empowering, and shows that Dove is trying to get in touch with all the 20-year-old girls of the “clean girl” era. We like exercise, but we also practice affirmations and avoid toxic diet culture.
Another one featuring Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, targets hate speech by picturing Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg having a dialogue about why people hate each other. The millennials may also be a target audience to this one, but only piggybacking on Gen Z – my high school years were when hate speech became trendy to speak out against, The Hate You Give was the most respectable recreational book of choice, and the political infographics ran rampant on Instagram stories. We grew up knowing you should care, we never had to re-learn or un-learn.
The halftime show
And now for the main source of non-gameplay entertainment, Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance is a sure-fire way to ensure Gen Z tune on at least for 15 minutes of the event. He won Record of the Year for his diss track on Drake, “Not Like Us,” and he also won over the hearts of Gen Z. Every karaoke bar I went to for months in the spring of 2024 had at least one if not two or three performances of it. I hadn’t heard a song become so popular with my peers since “Gangnam Style” by Psy in 2012.
I read an article that wondered how Kendrick Lamar connects to Louisiana, as the artist historically is chosen based on a relation to the city or state the Super Bowl happens in. Melvin Villaver, a performing arts professor at Clemson, posits that Lamar represents Black America and also Jazz music. Villaver told NPR reporter Leila Fadel that “If you listen to Kendrick’s music and his body of work, he’s very – he’s fused jazz into his repertoire. And New Orleans is considered the birthplace of jazz.”
I’m sure that makes sense, but I’m also sure they knew his popularity with demographics who have historically been less excited to tune in to football on that glorious second Sunday in February.
Betting
Sports betting has blown up with Gen Z. I was walking through my friend’s old high school last week and actually saw a flyer for a sports betting addiction support group for teenagers.
If that doesn’t explain it, I also offer that every sports-interested male I know at least has the DraftKings or FanDuel app downloaded to their phone and fell victim to the free $5 starting bet. Most of them are now either into the negative hundreds, or the small-bill gains.
Even males who may not have played football, may not understand the game or enjoy watching it, have found a way to be included in the excitement of the Super Bowl.
So, here we are
Everyone I know has plans to juggle the four different watch parties they were invited to, or getting to one of the five bars downtown seven hours early to get a good seat for viewing. The Super Bowl, in all its facets, tailored to us, and we came running. Gen Z is many things, but difficult to please isn’t one of them.
For me, I’ve always loved watching the game. That being said, for the first time this year, I called out of work and bought the ingredients to make my mother’s version of the mysterious seven-layer dip (how did all our mom’s find their own tweak to such a classic recipe?)
So, maybe we’ve also grown up.
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