The 2025–26 NFL Season Is a Defining Moment for Brands In A Fragmented Media Ecosystem

The NFL is one of the last great cultural stages where millions of fans come together in real time. But the way audiences experience the season — and the way brands need to show up — is evolving at record speed.

The 2025–26 season has already proven it: NBCUniversal has marked its highest-grossing NFL slate ever, with Super Bowl LX sold out months ahead of kickoff at 7 million for a 30-second ad spot. On YouTube, creators like MrBeast and IShowSpeed fueled massive engagement around Sunday Ticket in Week 1, with a spot that generated over 5 million views in one day on YouTube alone, while Amazon and Roku are scaling shoppable ad formats that turn game day into a commerce event.

The NFL’s ecosystem now spans record-setting broadcast buys, creator-driven second-screen moments, and interactive, shoppable TV — an increasingly complex environment that requires more than media buying.

To succeed, brands need a unified strategy that connects stadium exposure, streaming platforms, and second-screen interactivity. That’s where Infillion delivers — bridging the roar of the live game with precision, identity, and performance across every fan touchpoint.

Let’s take a look at the major themes emerging this NFL season.

The NFL’s Platform Play: Every Stream Is Prime Time

For the first time, NFL audiences are spread across a patchwork of platforms: broadcast, cable, Peacock, YouTube TV, and Prime Video. Week 1 underscored this shift — YouTube creators drew millions of interactions around Sunday Ticket, while Amazon’s Thursday Night Football continues to anchor streaming-first viewing habits.

Infillion’s own 2024 research validates this behavior: 46% of sports fans now say they’re watching more sports on streaming than before 2020, with Millennials and Gen-Z increasingly splitting their viewing across TV, mobile, laptop, and tablet. That fragmentation creates both complexity and opportunity.

The Infillion Solution:

EMarketer reports that streaming-exclusive games are 66% more effective for brands than traditional broadcast or cable, as fans lean in, engage, and take action.

Fragmentation is only a problem if you can’t connect the dots. Infillion’s platform unifies exposure across stadium and screen:

• InStadium reach: Access to 97% of pro and college sports venues nationwide, including video boards and LED assets across 23 NFL teams
• Cross-device retargeting: Our identity-driven technology connects live impressions to premium CTV, mobile, desktop, and interactive formats, ensuring fans are re-engaged wherever they watch next
• Engagement formats fans prefer: Research shows 60% of sports fans say they’re “very” or “extremely” likely to prioritize streaming services with ad-free options — making Infillion’s TrueX opt-in ads especially powerful, as they deliver fewer ads, better brand lift, and more time watching the game
• Dynamic, data-backed targeting: Sports fans’ preferences are fluid — shifting with playoffs, trades, and rising stars — which is why Infillion leverages real-time first-party data to engage fans based on what they’re interested in right now

Click, Cart, Touchdown: Game Day Goes Commerce-First

The 2025 season is also a testbed for shoppable TV at scale. Amazon has expanded interactive ads on Prime Video, Roku is rolling out Action Ads with Shopify, and NBCU has introduced “Must ShopTV” moments across its sports portfolio.

For fans, the couch is becoming a commerce channel — and the NFL is where they’re most engaged.

The Infillion Difference

Shoppable isn’t new to us — it’s built into our DNA. Infillion’s creative toolkit includes:

• Interactive Video (IDV/IDVx) with hotspots, carousels, and branching paths.
• TrueX engagement ads that qualify audiences and guide them down the funnel.
• Seamless DOOH-to-digital retargeting, turning stadium exposure into digital action.
• Infillion ShopX, our proprietary shoppable solution, transforms interactive moments into instant cart conversions—ensuring brands can move fans from “see it” to “shop it” in real time.
  • Exposed households leveraging ShopX saw a 126% increase in CPG Brand Sales, performing 32x higher than industry norms, driven by significant lift in sales penetration.

Where NFL partners are piloting experiments, Infillion brings proven performance — driving higher CTR, stronger engagement, and measurable brand lift across campaigns.

Ad Inflation Is Real — and the Super Bowl Proves It

Super Bowl ad costs are moving like the rest of the economy — up, fast. NBC sold out Super Bowl LX months early, with 30-second spots topping ~$8 million.

That’s nearly a 45% jump since 2021, mirroring the inflation consumers feel at the grocery store, the gas pump, and beyond.

But here’s the difference: brands aren’t pulling back. They’re doubling down.

Why? Because nothing else delivers what the NFL does. Super Bowl LIX drew 126 million viewers — the most-watched broadcast in U.S. history.

In an era of belt-tightening, it remains the one moment advertisers will pay any price to own.

The Infillion Solution:

The value of the Super Bowl extends well beyond a single 30-second ad. Infillion helps brands:

• Surround the broadcast with second-screen activations, reaching the 80% of fans who use their phones while watching.
• Extend attention into the post-game window, retargeting viewers for weeks after the confetti falls.
• Translate the cultural buzz into measurable outcomes with brand lift studies, footfall attribution, and interactive ad formats.

With Infillion, brands can stretch their Super Bowl presence across time, device, and channel — turning one night into an entire campaign.

The Takeaway

The NFL is changing, but its cultural weight has never been stronger.

Fragmented viewing, soaring Super Bowl prices, and the rise of shoppable formats all point to a simple truth: brands can’t afford to just “show up” for one night anymore. They need a partner who can connect live scale, digital interactivity, and measurable outcomes.

That’s the Infillion advantage: helping you own every phase of the season — from the roar of the stadium to the scroll of the second screen.