NFL schedule release videos are going viral–and YouTube has them all

Over the last few years, the NFL‘s schedule release day has become a social media showdown, with teams no longer merely announcing the dates and times of their next season’s games on paper, but making a true digital video festival of the whole shebang.

This year, all 32 teams in the league put out videos, and YouTube is promo’ing the hell out of them–which isn’t a surprise, since it paid $14 billion for 7 years of exclusive rights to the NFL’s Sunday Ticket.

In an official company blog post, YouTube called out how teams’ past efforts have generated viral videos like the Los Angeles Chargers‘ electrifying homage to anime and the Tennessee Titans‘ extremely meme “why don’t we just ask people on the street to help us” approach. Previous years’ videos have generated tens of millions of views across YouTube and other platforms.

So, what’s the lineup for this year?

(Quick note: We tried to drop in the YouTube version of the Chargers’ announcement and got a notice that the team has blocked it from playing as an embed. Interesting!)

The Chargers, unsurprisingly, are back with another pop culture presentation: their announcement is set in The Sims

, and has racked up nearly 240,000 views since dropping last week. Things may shake out differently in the next Super Bowl, but for now, in terms of sheer view count, the league’s other top teams include the Chicago Bears (124,000 views), the Kansas City Chiefs (117K), and the Buffalo Bills (99K).

Like videos from past years, many of 2024’s videos are built on internet trends. We’ve got two hydraulic presses (from the Chiefs and the Houston Texans), a plethora of dad jokes (Pittsburgh Steelers), nods to meme staples Parks and Rec (Bills) and The Big Lebowski (Cleveland Browns), and even a take on “is it cake?” from the Washington Commanders.

According to the NFL’s official YouTube playlist, the schedule release videos have so far generated more than 1.2 million views collectively.

And, of course, YouTube is likely hoping users are charmed by and/or excited enough about these videos that they subscribe to Sunday Ticket and help it recoup some of that cool $14 billion.