Why Levi’s made a big play for the Super Bowl

While tennis and fashion have strengthened their union over the past few years, another strong frontier for retailers has been the Super Bowl.

From Thom Browne to Abercrombie & Fitch, the annual championship has invited collaborations from fashion brands across the board.

For Levi’s, however—which ran a week-long immersive pop-up titled “Home Turf” in San Francisco last week—the connection this year was deeper.

For starters, the mega event was held in San Francisco, aka the birthplace of Levi Strauss. Moreover, the game was played at Levi’s Stadium, making it another important moment for the retailer.

“We wanted to really have something that was engaging, that took advantage of the stars aligning where we have this important game coming to Levi’s Stadium—to the city where Levi’s is born and based in—and that’s where we sort of came up with the idea of ‘Home Turf,’ creating a dynamic program that is basically [an] intersection of sport and culture and product,” Les Green, head of marketing of the sports, music, and collaborations departments at Levi’s, told Retail Brew.

At the weeklong event, over thousand visitors per day were treated to live music and cultural programming featuring Bay Area artists, panel discussions, product collaborations, and exhibits looking back at Levi’s history with sports.

Another big part of the pop-up was “customization,” which per Green, works well for denim since it acts “as a great canvas for expression,” while also highlighting a “pep rally” organized by the brand where artists performed on a “tiny desk stage.”

Although the pop-up paid homage to Levi’s roots in the region, it also helped put the brand on the radar of a range of customers who may not have been familiar with it.“We know that [our customers] increasingly care about all the kinds of things that move the needle in culture, whether that be music, fashion, and obviously sports,” Green said. “When it comes to big moments like this, there’s secondary, tertiary audiences that we also want to engage with,” including sports fans but also people for whom the Super Bowl represents “a cultural moment.”

“They may not even be die-hard sports fans, but when moments like this happen and sport and culture start to converge, they become interested, and we want to activate and engage them as well,” he added.

And while the Super Bowl was a huge moment for the brand, Green does not believe it’s anywhere close to the end of the retailer’s budding tryst with sports. “I can’t talk too much about what’s immediately on the horizon, but I can say that 2026, you could kind of consider that, for Levi’s, the year of sport,” he said.