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Few combinations scream America like football and chicken wings.
And Applebee’s, the restaurant chain known for its boneless wings, is cashing in. When football season kicks off later this year, Applebee’s will be the official bar and grill of the NFL as part of a partnership struck up earlier this year.
The move to team up with the league is the latest in a series of pushes into sports marketing from Applebee’s, which has made plays to center itself around America’s actual favorite pastime.
“We’ve done some work, some research, and Applebee’s guests over-index as NFL fans,” Joel Yashinsky, Applebee’s CMO, said. “We were able to work together to develop a partnership that we were really excited to bring forward that we think is going to be a huge benefit for our restaurant, and, most importantly, for our guests.”
Play ball
Applebee’s restaurants have long featured televisions that are often showing sports, and in the United States, no sport is more popular than football: In a Gallup survey conducted last December, 41% of US adults ranked football as their favorite sport, a larger percentage than those who chose baseball and basketball combined. It has maintained its position as the top sport among US adults since 1972, when it overtook baseball, according to Gallup research.
Applebee’s, meanwhile, has also aligned itself with the sport in other ways: It has been the official sponsor of Football Night in America, the pregame show for NBC’s Sunday Night Football, since 2019. And last month, Whistle, a sports and entertainment content creation company, released a video—sponsored by Applebee’s—where San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk works as an “undercover server” at an Applebee’s.
The partnership, which Yashinsky said will last for multiple years, kicked off with a promotion tied to the 2024 NFL Draft in April, offering customers 20 free boneless wings with online orders of at least $40 over a three-day period.
Yashinsky said the partners are considering an array of activations through the rest of the multi-year partnership, ranging from in-season promotions to possibly offering a sweepstakes to send fans to the Super Bowl.
“That partnership is going to have a lot of different elements to it that we think is going to be a lot of fun,” Yashinsky said.
To spread word of the partnership, the company plans to roll out ads across digital and social, Yashinsky said. Applebee’s plans to debut another promotion around the start of the NFL season in September, Yashinsky said, and while he refrained from offering specifics, he noted that there will likely be several cross-activations between the brands throughout the year.
“The beauty of the NFL is that there are 365 days a year, they have something going on all the time,” he said. “It’s impressive how impactful they are as a brand and how their shield is so impactful, really, to engagement for partners like us.”