Super Bowl logos used to be unique and creative. Here's why the NFL should bring back the flair

The Super Bowl is America’s marquee championship sporting event, with millions of people tuning in every year.

Whether it’s diehard sports fanatics, casuals or those interested in entertaining commercials and halftime shows, on one Sunday in February, most of the country turns its attention to one game.

The hype around the game — the event, really — used to come with a unique logo that showcased the game and the host city. That all stopped with Super Bowl XLV. The 2011 game, in which the Green Bay Packers topped the Pittsburgh Steelers, was the maiden voyage of a generic Super Bowl logo that ruled for five seasons, and served as the template for the Super Bowl 50 logo.

Since then ... a different generic logo has ruled the day.

And fans have noticed, some even taking to Twitter to ask: What happened to the unique images that branded the event?

“I’ve been a little surprised by how many fans care and really miss the old logos,” said Paul Lukas, Uni Watch founder and noted sports aesthetics expert. “It seems like a missed opportunity to do something cool and instead they just do something boring.”

Impact of ditching unique Super Bowl logos

Super Bowl logos used to be substantially different every year. But over the last 12 years, they’ve become dull and repetitive, drained of real creativity.

There’s no quantifiable way to tell if this has impacted the NFL monetarily. Like most things, it’s not making a dent in the league’s profits; according to CNBC, the NFL made $9.8 billion in national revenue in 2021.

Yet Lukas says the change among fans is “clearly a net negative.”

When The Athletic's Chris Vannini raised the subject on Twitter, NFL fans surely seemed to agree.

Why did the league change the approach to the logo? Well, the NFL hasn’t officially stated its reasoning for creating a logo that is strikingly consistent year after year, but Lukas speculated the league wanted consistent branding for the event as a sort of safeguard.

“I think that the NFL views the Super Bowl itself as a brand,” Lukas said. “To them that means they wanted to have consistent branding and consistent design every year.”

Landor, the branding firm that worked with the NFL to create the initial Lombardi Trophy-inspired template, did explain the choice on its website that the league: "A sports event of this stature needed a consistent, iconic identity — a symbol that fans could immediately recognize, much like the Olympic rings."

Take last year’s game. It was originally supposed to be SoFi Stadium’s moment in the spotlight, but the NFL pushed its Super Bowl back a season after construction on the Rams' stadium, which hosts Sunday’s matchup, was delayed by a storm.

“When you tie the logo of the event to the location,” Lukas said, “that leaves you vulnerable if something goes wrong. … The kind of logo that they have now is safe.”

Could NFTs nudge NFL to create unique Super Bowl logos again?

As the Super Bowl has grown, so has its fleet of corporate sponsorships. That isn’t unique to the NFL, but it does impact the fans.

“Whether you watch the World Series, whether you watch the NBA Finals, the NBA All-Star Game, those events are always going to be highly sought after by corporate sponsors and brands wanting to participate,” said Adweek’s Rafael Canton.

“It definitely has priced out fans. These big events do involve a lot of corporate sponsors, who end up buying tickets or buying seats through the deal that they negotiate with these professional leagues.”

This issue was raised again recently by longtime Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson. If the NFL wants to expand its offerings into less exorbitant realms, the zeitgeist says it could look to the world of cryptocurrency. With the rise of non-fungible tokens, commonly known as NFTs, a more creative Super Bowl logo could represent a golden opportunity.

NFTs are one-of-a-kind digital files verified through the blockchain — think rare baseball card, but created and stored in a tangle of next-generation internet connections instead of in your dusty garage.

The Super Bowl will be awash in ads for cryptocurrency companies, but the NFL has been relatively hesitant to step into the futuristic, and controversial, financial frontier. NFTs are the one crypto space the NFL has clearly embraced, though. Earlier this season, the league announced a partnership with Dapper Labs — the company that runs Top Shot for the NBA — to turn exclusive video highlights into NFTs.

But how valuable would an NFT of a logo that looks the same every year be? Not very.

“You are missing out on an opportunity with a unique look,” Canton said.

A return to some version of season-specific Super Bowl designs might carry more appeal. If the NFL does push further into that virtual space, maybe it will breathe life into its logos once again.