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At the 2026 Super Bowl — aka the ‘Benito Bowl’, or the ‘Bad Bunny Bowl’, as many have dubbed it online — Bad Bunny became the first artist to perform a halftime show entirely in Spanish. He did so wearing a football-inspired fit by Zara — the Spanish-owned high street brand that’s a far cry from the Schiaparelli he wore to the Grammys last week — and a new colorway of BadBo 1.0, the sneaker he designed with Adidas. Partway through, he was joined on-stage by Lady Gaga in custom Luar.
Before him, for her performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, Coco Jones paid homage to Whitney Houston in a Karl Kani outfit that nodded to Houston’s Le Coq Sportif white and red tracksuit for her own 1991 Super Bowl performance, and Brandi Carlile sang “America, the Beautiful” in Thom Browne, who had shown his Spring/Summer 2026 collection in San Francisco two nights prior.
Last year, fashion had a stronghold in New Orleans during Super Bowl weekend, from the Bode Rec. fashion show at the inaugural GQ Bowl, to Kendrick Lamar’s viral bootcut Celine jeans he wore for his halftime performance.
This year, fashion’s presence was louder, as Super Bowl weekend evolved into what those on the ground say felt like a mini-fashion week. Not one, but two fashion shows preceded Sunday’s game: on Friday, Thom Browne skipped New York Fashion Week to show his FW26 collection at the second annual GQ Bowl, while on Saturday, Abercrombie — the NFL’s official fashion partner as of August last year — held a fashion presentation in partnership with the league. Players — including 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (and his wife Olivia Culpo), Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, and Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins — strolled along a makeshift tunnel, as attendees crowded around the tunnel-meets-runway. Many of the players who walked were mingling with attendees over cocktails moments before.
Fashion and beauty brands have long seen value in the Super Bowl by virtue of the eyeballs on the event. This year, both Tecovas and Elf Beauty went the traditional route with commercial slots.
But these slots go for upward of $7 million (and this year reportedly hit the $10 million mark), meaning brands sit alongside ads for cars and beer. As fashion and sport become increasingly intertwined in the cultural sphere, brands are getting creative in how they lean into this overlap on one of sport’s buzziest weekends of the year. “When I’m at fashion week, sometimes I go to fashion shows and sometimes I go to presentations. It’s all a celebration of a brand or collection,” says Kyle Smith, fashion editor for the NFL. “The Super Bowl is becoming no different in that there are so many kinds of fashion activations.”
“Hosting a fashion show in the lead up to the game is still a novel concept for now, and brands doing it well receive a level of exposure they can’t get elsewhere, in front of a totally different audience,” says Daniel-Yaw Miller, sports and fashion journalist and author of the “SportsVerse” newsletter. “Hosting a show is also far more intimate and cost effective than a 30-second commercial that will likely be drowned out by all the others.”
The brand that will surely drum up the most attention of the weekend is, of course, Zara. Dressing Bad Bunny, the retailer didn’t pay for a slot, nor did it need to coordinate a show or event. Whether Bad Bunny’s Zara look can measure up to last year’s Celine jeans moment will be evident in the coming days, but his decision to go with a non-luxury outfitter will surely spur discourse.
“It’s certainly no guarantee that the moment with Kendrick Lamar’s viral Celine jeans during the halftime performance can be replicated, but I do think having a moment like this as a brand can have larger reach and impact than a traditional fashion show moment,” says Madeline Hill, co-host of The Sports Gossip Show podcast.
Bad Bunny mentions drove 39% of total Super Bowl coverage, generating nearly $170 million in media impact value (MIV) in the 12 hours after broadcast, per Launchmetrics. By brand, Zara generated $3.1 million in MIV, and Adidas generated $1.6 million. For brands like Zara that are accessible to far more Super Bowl viewers than usual, odds are they’ll have a larger ROI in terms of sales, too.For a brand like Zara that’s accessible to far more Super Bowl viewers than usual, odds are it’ll have a larger ROI in terms of sales, too.
For brands that do want to guarantee a place in the Super Bowl madness, here’s how the past weekend can serve as a blueprint for Super Bowl LX 2027 in sunny Los Angeles — an opportune destination for fashion.
Ripe for fashion
Though the NFL’s fashion finesse has felt like a fast rise, it’s been long in the making, Miller says. “It’s part of a years-long strategic push by the NFL to position the organization and its athletes adjacent to and intertwined with the fashion industry,” he says, from building strategic partnerships with brands like Abercrombie, to having players sit front row at fashion month — and walk in Vogue World. “The fashion industry now feels more familiar and comfortable collaborating with football as a result,” Miller says.
Over the last few years, athletes have flocked to fashion month, sitting front row and cultivating relationships with brands who have since appointed them as brand ambassadors. (There aren’t any NFL stars in those roles yet, but it’s sure to come.) Now, the reverse is happening. “Top fashion brands are looking to activate at marquee sporting events to stand out from the crowd and get in front of new consumer audiences and fresh commercial partners,” Miller says. For this, the Super Bowl is a no-brainer: it’s the most-watched sporting event in the US, and among the top 10 globally.
This was the selling point for Abercrombie, says CMO Carey Krug. “It’s not just about selling clothes, but about being part of the moments people genuinely care about,” she says, noting the NFL’s huge reach. “The Super Bowl is one of the last truly shared cultural moments. It is live, unscripted, and emotionally real — and that authenticity is resonating in an age of AI and manufactured reality.”
Consumers are ready, Smith says. Before being named fashion editor in 2024, he worked on the NFL’s social team. “You could see fan reactions to [fashion] changing in real time,” Smith says. “From maybe an older fan that didn’t grow up with this crossover to what we have now, where Gen Z really understands you can be interested in fashion and in sports and it doesn’t take away from one or the other.”
The audience watching from home is wide, and the audience in town for the Super Bowl is noteworthy. “I always say, the most famous person you know is a sports fan; probably a football fan,” Smith says. “When you come for the Super Bowl, wherever it is, everyone’s here.” This makes it easy for brands to meet buzzy celebs, as well as athletes, where they are. This year, Jay Z and Blue Ivy, Kim Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton (seemingly confirming their rumored romance), Roger Federer, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Pedro Pascal, Eiza González, and Travis Scott were in attendance at the game. Alongside the many athletes, Emma Roberts, Kehlani, and Saweetie were at the Abercrombie show; and Teyana Taylor and Industry’s Myha’la were front row at Thom Browne.
As more brands seek to carve out a slice of the Super Bowl pie, they ought not to go too fashion-y, Hill says, lest they accidentally exclude the very audience they’re trying to court. “The majority of people who consume content specifically tied to fashion shows are either those who work in the industry or are people who care about style and fashion themselves,” she says. “In contrast, the Super Bowl reaches so many different audiences. Brands have a unique opportunity with the Super Bowl to capitalize on sports fans who have largely been left out of the conversation in a way that a traditional fashion show doesn’t.”
Carving out space
This weekend’s events offered a lesson in what that might look like, for brands from high street to luxury.
Abercrombie, for instance, hosted a presentation, rather than a runway. “We were inspired by the tunnel walk, which has become a new runway; athletes are now as influential off the field as they are on it,” Krug says. At the GQ Bowl, Thom Browne opted for a more traditional runway format to show his SS26 collection — and debut a surprise Asics collaboration.
“The A&F show was a really well-curated presentation that struck just the right tone. It didn’t take itself too seriously, heavily incorporated NFL players and their partners into the runway casting, and kept things super small and intimate,” Miller says. “It wasn’t a typical full-blown fashion show, more of a showcase of A&F’s new positioning at the heart of the NFL’s marketing engine, and I think it worked.”
The only downside for brands showing up ahead of Sunday’s game was that, though there’s plenty of buzz across the weekend, no viewership numbers came close to measuring up to the Bowl itself. Plus, the week leading up to the Super Bowl was already crowded with events, Hill cautions. “If brands want to stand out, they will need to eventize the show to match the energy ahead of game day,” she says. The GQ Bowl model embodies this ethos: it’s not just the runway — there’s a red carpet beforehand, and a party to follow.
Smart brands will be paying attention to these buzzy events like GQ Bowl, Miller says: it offers a platform for brands to tap in without having to plan a whole event from scratch themselves. Instead, they can tap into existing, fashion-friendly infrastructure.
In San Francisco this weekend, the appetite for fashion in and around Super Bowl weekend was strong, Miller says. “This has been the most fashion-integrated Super Bowl to date, and speaking to people on the ground, there is appetite in future years for even more of a presence from the fashion industry.”
Smith is expecting next year’s LA edition to be even bigger, given how entrenched fashion already is in the city and how many brands are LA-built. “So many brands are going to be watching this year to see the success of how the brands here are activating, and how they can be even bigger for next year.”
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