The Super Bowl is the biggest night of the year for American football fans, but it has also long been a draw for general media consumers. Nearly every major corporation prepares advertisements for the event in order to capitalize on its built-in audience, which has also made it a bastion for movie and TV trailers. For example, yesterday's Super Bowl 56 included a trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It also wound up including a bizarre nod to Epic Games' popular battle royale Fortnite.
This year's competition was between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals, taking place in Inglewood's SoFi Stadium - a $5 billion project serving as the home for both the Rams and the Chargers. Super Bowl 56 being held in Los Angeles was a big deal after the Rams were relocated from St. Louis, Missouri in 2016, and ultimately the home team won 23-20. The whole thing kicked off with an introduction by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, described as the "Guy from Fortnite" in an official upload of his speech by NFL's YouTube account. This has garnered a lot of attention, which goes to show Fortnite's continuing power as a marketing tool.
The Rock's Status as 'Guy from Fortnite'
Epic Games' popular shooter helped revolutionize the battle royale genre that started to gain its footing with titles such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Fortnite's consistent updates has solidified its place as a cultural juggernaut. That status has resulted in media like Avenger's Endgame directly referencing the game, as well as numerous tie-in skins for both new and classic pop culture artifacts.
One example of this catalog of referential skins in Fortnite is an Uncharted crossover released to advertise the upcoming Tom Holland film. This crossover comes amid a season of content headlined by characters such as Spider-Man, and plenty of movies, TV shows, and video games have joined the Fortnite universe. Skins have even been based on NFL teams, with court documents from the Epic Games/Apple lawsuit released last year revealing that Epic made $50 million on NFL skins in just two months back in 2018.
A trend with recent crossovers has been real-world celebrities as original characters in the battle royale's narrative, rather than seeing a glut of them based on licensed properties. Ariana Grande and Johnson have both received this honor, with The Rock playing Fortnite's The Foundation: leader of a group known as The Seven.
Fortnite's Marketing Potential Via The Super Bowl
Though Johnson plays a major character who is currently relevant in Fortnite's Chapter 3 Season 1, and the game has a history of working with the NFL, there's no reason the NFL needed to name-drop Epic Games' battle royale. After all, Johnson is an international movie star and former pro-wrestler; named the highest-paid male actor two-years straight in 2020 by Forbes magazine. Saying "The Rock" arguably carries more weight, especially since his introductory speech for Super Bowl 56 did not reference Fortnite.
Yet the widespread reaction on social media as people shared the NFL video title in disbelief was telling. The cultural cachet that Fortnite has amassed via its large fanbase and crossover potential clearly means something, and it's hard to ignore how much of a search engine optimization (SEO) push the game adds to even major events like the Super Bowl. Whether the NFL intended this to be a one-off joke that thrives on its shock value or not, a lesson may be taken away.
Other events could lean on Fortnite as an SEO crutch, with something like the Academy Awards being a prime example. The 94th Oscars ceremony will be held on March 27, and it follows a rapidly snowballing decline in viewership that dipped as low as 9.8 million viewers for ABC in 2021 (down 58 percent from the prior year's all-time low, according to Nielsen data). With Dune nominated for awards including Best Picture, it's not hard to imagine a presenter reference Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet appearing in Fortnite. This may be a cheap trick to garner extra attention, but when the Super Bowl proves it's an effective strategy, nothing is off the table.
Fortnite is free-to-play on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.