Media releases

• Super Bowl LX: NFL’s ‘secret sauce’ brings entertainment — but diversity questions remain

  Wednesday, February 04, 2026 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY — February 4, 2026 — R0013

  While the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots will go head-to-head this Sunday to secure the Super Bowl LX title, it’s the National Football League (NFL) that will ultimately come out on top, say Brock University researchers.

  “The NFL’s ‘marketing machine’ has been telling compelling narratives of players and franchises across the league all year so that regardless of who ultimately wins, there’s going to be a great story attached,” says Assistant Professor of Sport Management Ryan Clutterbuck. “The NFL’s ‘secret sauce’ is how it capitalizes on those stories and engrains itself into the culture of its fans.” 

  Part of the allure this year lies in the redemption arcs and unexpected rises to the top playing out with athletes and coaches on both teams, Clutterbuck says. 

  Even the teams themselves, which last faced off in 2015, had dismal pre-season odds to make it to the Super Bowl.

  “Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold is now a starting quarterback in the Super Bowl after persevering through management decisions that took away his starting position and could have ended his career, and Patriots quarterback Drake Maye — in his second year in the NFL — is an MVP candidate in the biggest game of his career,” Clutterbuck says. “You also have Patriots Head Coach Mike Vrabel’s triumphant return to the Super Bowl to watch, so whichever way the game goes, there’s going to be great images and post-game conversation focused on remarkable achievements.”

  In off-the-field action, the buzz about this year’s halftime show, headlined by Bad Bunny, is exactly the sort of chatter the NFL and its advertisers like to see, says Derek Foster, Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film.

  Public reaction has ranged from fandom to dismay, but Foster says no one should be surprised by the NFL courting the world’s most popular artist for its biggest game of the year.

  “The NFL is increasingly positioning itself as an international cultural product, playing games in international cities to widen the reach of the league,” he says. “American artist Bad Bunny has made it to the top of every country’s Spotify playlist, top in international sales and so forth, so he represents a constituency that the NFL would find very difficult to ignore.” 

  Foster says that in the interest of spectacular halftime shows, the NFL has taken a much more hands-off approach to programming, instead letting Jay-Z’s Roc Nation select the musical acts since 2019. 

  He also points to the initial resistance to Taylor Swift’s fandom descending on the NFL and notes that the “experiment” worked, because supersizing the “spectacle” of the Super Bowl to be more inclusive of a young female audience allowed new fans to connect with the event.  

  “Some NFL owners reportedly resisted the initial halftime show headliner announcement due to the language divide, because as a Puerto Rican, Bad Bunny performs in Spanish,” Foster says. “Knowing the marketplace, they were not going to lose traditional Super Bowl viewers who still want to watch football, but they now have an opportunity to expand viewers worldwide.”

  Despite successes in cultivating connections with fans and diversifying viewership, Clutterbuck says the league still has considerable work to do within its own ranks after a “frustrating hiring cycle in terms of under-representation of minorities in senior leadership roles.”  

  Notably, only one of the 10 head coaching jobs available this offseason went to a minority candidate, Clutterbuck says, and none went to Black candidates.

  “In a league made up of, depending on the year, between 75 to 80 per cent players of colour, this is another black eye for the league and its leaders,” he says. “The NFL has implemented policies to address some of these challenges, with some success, but this seems like a big step back — particularly this year in the context of the current political climate and the NFL’s previous public efforts to ‘End Racism.’” 

   

  Assistant Professor of Sport Management Ryan Clutterbuck and Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film Derek Foster are available for media interviews on this topic.

  
  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  *Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University [email protected] or 289-241-5483

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  Categories: Media releases

• Why the Olympics needs to rethink its future: Brock experts

  Wednesday, February 04, 2026 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY — February 4, 2026 — R0012

  As the 2026 Winter Olympics get underway, Brock University researchers are weighing in on declining interest among young audiences and hosting challenges that could impact the longevity of the Games. 

  Assistant Professor of Sport Management Taylor McKee says youths once viewed athletes, like 1996 Jamaican-Canadian gold medallist Donovan Bailey, as “larger than life” national celebrities and the Olympics as top-tier sport — but times are changing.  

  The sport nationalism that has been deeply embedded in the modern Olympic Games since their 1896 revival “by Western European powers in the fires of European nationalism,” has waned, he says, especially among youth. 

  Today, high-profile athletes are a “brand” who aren’t necessarily seen as representing their country or being part of a larger effort to achieve national sport accomplishments, McKee says. 

  “For example, Connor McDavid is a brand as much as he’s a hockey player,” McKee says of the famed Edmonton Oilers captain who will be playing for Team Canada at the Games. “That ‘brand’ is built through highlights, media narratives and sponsorships, and it can travel across borders, so the audience connection is often to the individual star rather than to the nation on the jersey.” 

  Audiences consume sport in large part through products, such as team brands, fantasy sport and merchandise, he says. Nationality, as experienced in the Olympics, is, in some fashion, immaterial to the consumption of these sport products, he adds. 

  To bring more youth back into the Olympic fold, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) created the Youth Olympic Games, a multi-sport games experience for athletes aged 15 to 18, in 2010. But the event, which is held in the same year as the Olympics, has not been well-promoted or received much media attention, doing little to support its intended mission, McKee says. 

  That hasn’t stopped the IOC from taking other approaches, augmenting Olympic programming to try and draw in younger audiences. The introduction of breakdancing to the Olympic roster and development of the Olympic Esports Series are two recent examples of attempts to attract younger demographics, McKee says. 

  Associate Professor of Sport Management Olan Scott says including other sports such as rock climbing and ski cross can help make the Olympics more appealing to younger viewers. 

  He says many youths are intrigued by these and other high-adrenaline events like skeleton, luge and snowboarding.  

  “They don’t often get to watch these sports on TV or streaming platforms,” Scott says. “For instance, in skeleton, they are excited to see athletes go down an ice track headfirst at more than 130 kilometres per hour and see the spectacle that they do not often get to see on regular sport programming.”

  The IOC continues to look at new sports and events to capture the attention of younger generations and people who may not play organized sport, he says.

  “Sports vying for Olympic inclusion need to broaden the community of people interested in the Olympic Games and, in particular, to reach younger and non-sport fan audiences,” Scott says. “Traditional sports are also looking to reposition themselves to showcase their sport being played in a new manner.” 

  Traditional five-on-five basketball, for instance, has been in the Olympics consistently since 1936 for men and 1976 for women. An adapted version of the sport debuted at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. This popular three-on-three format, played on a halfcourt, is popular all over the world, he says.  

  Attracting viewers isn’t the only challenge the Olympics is facing. 

  A decline in interest to host the Olympics is also of concern for the longevity and appeal of the Games, says Scott.

  “It’s at the point where the IOC is not even having a bid process anymore,” he says. “It’s more like a tender or negotiated agreement between a city or country and the IOC, which further reduces the amount of transparency.” 

  Scott says high costs of building or even retrofitting infrastructure, steep prices of admissions to events, a reluctance from taxpayers to fund the Olympic Games and the impacts of climate change are among reasons why cities and countries are reluctant to step forward. 

  Both Scott and McKee predict major changes for future Olympics. 

  “I think we’ll be seeing a stripped-down version,” says Scott. “It might be a format where one Olympics is held on every continent, and it cycles around for the next 20 years.” 

  McKee envisions an Olympics with events spread out over continents, with chosen locations dependent on countries’ existing facilities, climates and regional sport fan bases.   

  “The Olympics shouldn’t be in a position to force cities to build brand new facilities, so fragmentation might be the best of all the bad options the IOC’s got right now,” he says.

  Assistant Professor Taylor McKee and Associate Professor Olan Scott, both in Brock University’s Department of Sport Management, are available for media interviews on this topic.

  
  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  *Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University [email protected] or 289-241-5483

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  Categories: Media releases