- Nike aired its first Super Bowl commercial in 27 years to advertise performance apparel.
- The ad featured female athletes and aligns with CEO Elliott Hill’s growth strategy.
- Nike’s focus on women’s sports aims to curb declining sales and drive innovation, analysts say.
Nike aired its first Super Bowl ad in 27 years on Sunday as the sports giant attempts to attract more athletes to its performance apparel. The stars of the slot: women.
The 60-second “So Win” commercial aired during Super Bowl LIX and featured eight female athletes, delivering a strong message about the perception of women’s sports. If you’ve been keeping up with new CEO Elliott Hill’s plans to put Nike back on top, it’s not a surprising move.
Hill told investors during the Q2 FY25 earnings call that the brand is “running a gender offense” to drive growth in different sports.
Nike announced last year that it inked a 12-year deal with the NBA, WNBA, and NBA G League to be the exclusive uniform and apparel provider for each league.
As the WNBA grows in popularity, Nike is in a position to capitalize, analysts have said. It deepened its relationship with the league in 2024 with the merchandising agreement.
“Since our league’s inception, Nike has committed to a shared vision for girls and women’s basketball,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in October.
Nike “lost focus” on product innovation under former CEO John Donahoe, and the Super Bowl commercial was Hill’s way of announcing to the world that this is the beginning of their comeback, Edward Jones analyst Brian Yarbrough told Business Insider.
“They’ve got the balance sheet and they’ve got the ability to spend,” Yarbrough told BI.
Nike probably spent big. A 30-second spot during the Super Bowl costs advertisers around $7 million; by that math, Nike spent an estimated $14 million to take advantage of the opportunity arising in women’s sports, Yarbrough said.
It appears that the bet paid off. The commercial generated 188,000 engagement actions, an important metric for advertisers made up of social media likes or comments. It was the most of any advertiser during the Super Bowl, according to social and consumer intelligence company Meltwater.
A spokesperson for Nike directed BI to a press release in response to a request for comment.
“Women’s sport isn’t the future, it’s right now. We’re seeing it in packed arenas, in TV ratings, in the way people are showing up for the game like never before,” said WNBA star and Nike athlete Sabrina Ionescu in the press release.
Nike has been struggling to reboot its sales, which dropped 8% year over year to $12.4 billion during the second quarter, the company told investors in December.
With the “So Win” campaign, Nike said it’s capturing the “outstanding rise of women athletes” — notably at a time when companies in other industries are rolling back their diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.
Nike has not publicly commented on its stance on DEI, but appealing to the masses is the way of the business if it wants to sell “a lot of things to a lot of people,” BMO analyst Simeon Siegel said.
“It’s very important that they can speak to a lot of people and tell powerful storytelling.”
