Move over, beer and potato chips — this year’s Super Bowl commercials want you to be healthy.
From telehealth companies and pharma giants marketing weight-loss drugs to food manufacturers highlighting their healthiest products, the ads for Feb. 8’s big game between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks leaned heavily into wellness. Health systems with commercials included Hartford (Conn.) Healthcare and Memphis, Tenn.-based St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“This could be the health Super Bowl,” Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Evanston, Ill.-based Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, told The Wall Street Journal for a Feb. 6 story. “You don’t think of the Super Bowl as a place to go and advertise that you should be getting your PSA tested.”
Mike Tyson starred in a commercial from the Make America Healthy Again Center about how “processed food kills.” Serena Williams pitched GLP-1s for telehealth startup Ro. Current and former NFL tight ends said to “relax your tight end” in a prostate cancer screening ad for Novartis.
A 30-second spot for television’s most-watched event, with nearly 125 million viewers in 2026, averaged about $8 million.
The ads were not without controversy. Telehealth firm Hims & Hers touted a cancer screening test that critics caution has limited clinical validation and is not yet FDA-approved, The Washington Post reported Feb. 6 (the company acknowledges that “false positive and false negative results can occur”). Hims & Hers said the commercial promotes how the company is making available healthcare services previously only accessible to the wealthy.
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