The sight of professional football players canoodling with their significant others at training camp is not new, exactly, but the sight of those moments being carefully captured and distributed across social media platforms with the apparent coordination of a two-minute drill — that is something else entirely.
Videos of three quarterbacks sharing tender moments with their partners at practice facilities went viral in rapid succession last week: Justin Herbert with his fiancée, the pop musician Taylor Madison Beer; Joe Burrow with Olivia Ponton; and Jaxson Dart with Marissa Ayers. The timing, it turns out, was not coincidental.
The clips are part of a coordinated content campaign by the National Football League, a source told Front Office Sports. The effort falls under what the league calls its "helmets-off" marketing strategy, which is a polite way of saying the N.F.L. would like you to think of its players as human beings with personal lives and not merely as large men colliding at high speeds.
"We look for authentic opportunities to highlight our players and the people who are part of their journey," Ian Trombetta, the league's senior vice president of social and influencer marketing, said. (The word "authentic," in this context, doing quite a bit of heavy lifting.)
The three women featured in the videos are all professional content creators with a combined following of more than 70 million across Instagram and TikTok — a number that exceeds the league's own social audience. When the N.F.L. shared Ms. Beer's engagement photos on its Instagram account, the post drew roughly ten times the engagement of its typical content.
The league has been open about its interest in reaching female fans, a priority that intensified after Taylor Swift's relationship with Travis Kelce turned Chiefs games into appointment viewing for demographics that had previously shown limited interest in third-and-long situations. Research from U.S.C. Annenberg found that nearly half of Generation Z viewers become interested in sports through content that has nothing to do with the games themselves.
The N.F.L. also has an eye on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where women's flag football will make its debut. In December, league clubs approved $32 million to develop a professional flag football league featuring both male and female athletes.
The strategy is, in its way, a return to an older television logic: if you want to expand your audience, give them someone to root for who is not wearing a helmet.
Original story published in Front Office Sports: "NFL WAGs Going Viral at Practice Are No Coincidence"