There are plenty of brands advertising this year that wouldn’t have been allowed in the big game just a few years ago, such as hard liquor or sports betting apps.
But one so-called “lifestyle” product — cannabis — is once again shut out from the Super Bowl this year, even though it’s legal in a majority of US states, and public support for legal weed has never been higher.
The National Football League has a “restricted” category for certain products, which applies not only to ads in the Super Bowl but to all NFL games, said spokesperson Alex Riethmiller.
The NFL didn’t elaborate on what else appears on its restricted ads list, but just because a product or company is on that list now doesn’t mean it will stay there indefinitely.
Anheuser-Busch is the exclusive beer and hard seltzer sponsor of the Super Bowl after renewing its contract with the league last year.
Where the league draws the line on what gets in and what gets rejected can be a bit puzzling.
The lack of cannabis ads in the biggest advertising event of the year is not for lack of trying.
California-based Weedmaps, which was founded in 2008 as a way to locate dispensaries online, asked its ad agency to broach the topic of getting an ad into the Super Bowl this year, “but it was a blanket ‘no,’” Juanjo Feijoo, COO of Weedmaps, said in an interview with The Verge.