Why YouTube is the ultimate destination for football culture all year long
Feb 05, 2025 – [[read-time]] minute read
A couple of weeks ago, music director Steve Epting posted a YouTube video titled, “What if Kendrick Lamar had a choir at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.” The video shows a big choir singing beautiful renditions of Lamar’s songs and has developed its own fan following, with more than a million views, and thousands upon thousands of comment likes. As one of those top comments says, “if this isn’t the best job application, I don’t know what is.”
Whether or not the choir plays with Lamar on February 9th in New Orleans, it’s clear that this interaction between fans, creators, and artists during one of the biggest cultural moments of the year could only happen on one place: YouTube. Whether you’re passionate about beauty, lifestyle, gaming, food, DIY, tech, you name it, YouTube is the only platform where fans find their entryway into sports in so many different ways. More than 35 billion hours of sports content is consumed annually on YouTube.
With so many worlds of content interacting with each other, fandom surrounding sports—and the opportunities for brands—are getting more expansive and more exciting than ever before. And on YouTube, these opportunities are not just during the Big Game—they’re 24/7. The conversations, excitement and participation on YouTube is always on and runs super deep.
More than 35 billion hours of sports content is consumed annually on YouTube.
The Big Game hype starts early on YouTube
In the weeks leading up to the game, YouTube fans relive the best plays, save their favorite recipes for game day, re-watch the classic ads and even learn trivia about why Super Bowl MVPs say “I’m going to Disneyland,” after their win. In anticipation of the halftime show, people are watching prediction videos for Lamar’s setlist, and going down the memory lane to re-watch their favorite performances. The top-10 most popular Halftime Shows on YouTube have more than 1 billion views—and fans keep coming back to them.
The top-10 most popular halftime shows on YouTube have more than 1 billion views
This buzz on the platform goes back all the way to the beginning of the season. Fans come to YouTube all season long to watch analysis and commentary on the games, behind the scenes moments and the newest favorite: podcasts from former and current players.
It’s not only the sports content that’s expanded, it’s the types of ways fans consume it. Surveyed users are 1.7x more likely to associate watching sports clips with YouTube Shorts vs. other short-form video platforms. Fan reactions and memes on Shorts are shaping and reflecting culture as it happens. Just watch this fun take from Peighton Tubre which got 5 million views on Shorts recently.
Creators help fans get closer to the action
All these worlds of content surrounding sports would be unimaginable without creators. 54% of people say they would rather watch a creator break down a major event than watch the event itself. With their unique styles and different areas of expertise, YouTube creators bring a perspective that goes beyond what fans get from a traditional broadcast.
And from the International Olympics Committee to the NFL, the world’s biggest sports organizations are taking note. Last year, the league partnered with top YouTube creators like Ryan Trahan, Sean Evans, Haley Kalil, Pierson Mark Rober, Faze Rug and more, so their subscribers could get an even more intimate look at the Big Game.
To appeal to the next generation of NFL fans, the league is showing up in a big way again. The NFL is hosting a flag football game just one day before the Super Bowl where top YouTube creators like Deestroying, Jason Kelce, IShowSpeed, Kai Cenat, MMG and more will participate along with other artists, celebrities and athletes.
The rest of us can join the fun too—you can tune in to an exclusive YouTube livestream of the game on the NFL’s channel on Saturday, Feb 8 at 9pm ET. Together, the creators playing, coaching, and commentating in the flag football game have YouTube subscribers that could fill more than 1,000 stadiums the size of the Caesar’s Superdome.
Savvy brands continue to connect with their audience in unique ways
Even though sports fandom is shifting so quickly, one thing hasn’t changed: Ads are still a quintessential part of marquee sports moments. As viewership of mass-culture moments continues to fragment across TV, streaming, and digital video, YouTube AdBlitz is the only place you can watch Big Game ads in one place, long after they’ve aired.
What has changed though is that brands are innovating to reach and connect with their audiences beyond the event and live broadcast moment alone.
Super Bowl 2024 ads and teasers posted on YouTube have more than 1 billion views
This year, Doritos is letting fans create and select their Big Game ad. To get everyone excited and encourage even more participation, they posted all 25 semi-final entries on YouTube for fans to decide the final top-three. Reese’s, GoDaddy, Taco Bell—with its Doja Cat starrer—and many others have already posted teasers on the platform. UberEats has developed a YouTube playlist for you to binge all their Big Game ad content.
I’m sure that in the weeks ahead, we’ll continue to see brands unleash their creativity on YouTube by posting new content and longer creative that their audience didn’t get to see during the game.
Like last year, Booking.com aired a 30-second spot starring Tina Fey. But they used YouTube to extend that storyline to a 90-second version as well as slice the creative differently to appeal to parents, couples and other audience segments. The ad received over 100 million views in its first week on YouTube. And 35% of people who saw the ad during game week exclusively saw it on YouTube.
These engagement strategies go really far for brands. Super Bowl 2024 ads and teasers posted on YouTube have more than 1 billion views (and counting).
For brands, there’s no better time than now to think about how they can reach their viewers in all the new ways they’re watching content, not just during the Big Game but all year long.
To catch up on more Big Game news and updates from Google and YouTube, check out our full coverage here.
1 YouTube data, global, May 2024.
2 NRG 2023, Future of Social Video. Base: 987 users aged 13-54, U.S.
3 Google/ SmithGeiger survey 2024; n=12,000
4 Google Ads, Internal Data