If you walked around Santa Clara during Super Bowl LX this weekend, the shift was hard to miss. The NFL credentialed more than 160 creators for the game. Dhar Mann held the same media pass as ESPN. Robert Irwin worked press zones usually reserved for Fox Sports.

The league didn't do this for optics. It did it because creators generated more total video views about the NFL this season than the league and its teams did on their own channels. According to Tubular Labs, creators drove roughly 34 billion NFL-related views this season, compared with about 23 billion across official league and team accounts.

Brands saw the same numbers. Then they started reworking their Super Bowl strategies around them—even if most are still figuring out what that actually means in practice.

Grubhub bought its first Super Bowl spot, anchored by George Clooney, while running creator work in parallel across social feeds. Liquid I.V. also made its Super Bowl debut this year, but the rollout clearly isn't designed to live only in the broadcast window. Pringles kept the formula simple: Sabrina Carpenter carries the TV moment, and her existing audience does much of the distribution afterward.

This isn't brands "amplifying" Super Bowl ads with a few influencer posts anymore. It's brands treating the Super Bowl as one node in a broader distribution system, not the system itself. The strategy decks make it look tidy. The reality is messier.

Christopher Krautler at Grubhub described what's actually happening: "We're really leveraging celebrity for authority. But we also have influencers, because they are really all about creating relatability and utility."

That distinction matters. The George Clooney spot establishes credibility with a mass audience. The creator partnerships translate that message into everyday use, tone, and context. Two budgets. Two strategies. Launched at the same time.

That’s the operating reality for most brands at Super Bowl LX. Broadcast still delivers reach and legitimacy at scale. Creators do the work that actually moves people closer to action.

The money reflects that shift. According to the IAB, U.S. ad spend tied to creators is forecast to reach around $37 billion in 2025, with further growth expected next year. At the same time, a single 30-second Super Bowl spot is now pushing $10 million.

What separates brands that are still figuring this out from brands that have it figured out is whether those two strategies work together or simply run alongside each other.

The split is becoming more pronounced. Brands aren't spending almost everything on broadcast and calling the rest "social amplification" anymore. Digital and creator budgets tied to the Super Bowl are materially larger than they were even a few years ago. These aren't test spends. They're signals that distribution has shifted, even if internal structures haven't fully caught up.

At the same time, traditional celebrity isn't going away. Dozens of Super Bowl LX ads still feature familiar faces—many of them older, well-known, and deliberately safe. It's all about risk mitigation when the stakes are this high. When you're spending that much money, familiarity feels like insurance.

Some brands went further than the two-budget model this year. Instead of treating creators as an extension layer, they involved them closer to the creative core.

Salesforce is the clearest example. Rather than using a creator as a cameo or amplification play, Salesforce handed its Super Bowl spot to MrBeast as the central creative force. This isn't a youth brand chasing relevance—Salesforce sells enterprise software to senior decision-makers. The bet isn't that executives suddenly behave like Gen Z, but that attention now flows through creator ecosystems regardless of audience age.

What's notable isn't just the choice of talent, but the timing. Creator involvement happened during concepting, not after the broadcast idea was locked. That changes how the work is built, not just how it's distributed.

Most brands still operate the other way around. They approve broadcast creative first, then brief creators later to extend a message they had no hand in shaping. The result often looks fine, but it rarely feels native to the platforms it's meant to live on.

Bad Bunny headlining the halftime show is a useful stress test for all of this.

Creators are already moving around the moment, many without formal brand deals or official partnerships. Latino lifestyle creators are posting outfit breakdowns of Bad Bunny's stage looks. Dance creators are learning and remixing the choreography within hours of the performance. Music commentary accounts are dissecting the setlist choices and what they signal about his next album. They're creating content because the cultural moment matters, not because a brand briefed them to do so.

Brands respond in different ways. Some position themselves early enough that their work feels adjacent to what's already happening. Others scramble to attach themselves once the wave is clearly visible. Bad Bunny’s upcoming performance has already seeped into advertising, including Duolingo’s “Bad Bunny 101” Spanish course and Melissa McCarthy rolling her Rs in an e.l.f. ad.

The underlying issue isn't creativity—it's speed. Culture moves through creators faster than brands can move through approvals, legal review, and procurement. Without pre-existing relationships, brands lose the ability to move at the speed of the conversation. By the time contracts are signed and creative is approved, the moment has already peaked and moved on. Brands that feel natural in moments like this didn't improvise. They built relationships long before they needed them.

The broadcast still delivers something creators can't replicate: massive, simultaneous attention. That matters for launches, repositioning, and signaling scale. The Super Bowl spot isn't dead—it's just no longer sufficient on its own.

What's changed is where the conversation about those moments actually happens. The ad airs. Then people open TikTok and Instagram. That's where reactions, commentary, remixes, and behind-the-scenes content live. Most of it isn't created by the networks airing the game.

Brands know this works, even if they struggle to prove it cleanly. Engagement rises. Creator-driven traffic increases. Conversion rates in those channels tend to outperform. What's missing is precise attribution. Most brands still can't say with confidence how much value came from broadcast versus creator work when everything launches at once.

That measurement gap slows budget shifts. So does infrastructure. One premium celebrity spot could fund hundreds of micro-creator partnerships. Very few organizations are built to manage that scale effectively, especially under Super Bowl-week pressure.

Super Bowl LX reveals three distinct approaches to creator strategy playing out simultaneously.

The two-budget model: Broadcast for credibility, creators for conversion. Running in parallel. Still working out how—or whether—the two layers truly connect.

The integrated model: Creators involved earlier in the creative process, shaping how the work is built rather than simply extending it afterward. The broadcast spot and the social content share the same creative DNA from the start, rather than one being adapted from the other. Harder to execute, but structurally different.

The reactive model: Brands responding to cultural moments that creators are already carrying. Moving fast, but often playing catch-up.

As Aaron Francois at Wasserman puts it, the shift is about meeting audiences where they already are, rather than asking them to redirect their attention.

The creator economy isn't just supplemental distribution anymore—it's infrastructure. The NFL treats it that way. Brands are moving in the same direction, even if many are still figuring out how to operate within it.

Super Bowl LX didn't make that change happen. It made it impossible to ignore.