Nike released its first Super Bowl commercial in 27 years on Sunday, and it garnered mixed reviews.
The ad featured nine of the sportswear giant’s signed female athletes. They responded to misconceptions about and critiques of women in sports, with phrases such as “You can’t fill a stadium, so fill it,” and “You can’t be emotional, so be emotional.”
Nike’s Super Bowl commercial ended with the line, “Whatever you do, you can’t win. So win.”
The company was praised for choosing to feature women athletes, and many saw the ad as a sign of the growing popularity of women’s sports.
But others thought Nike’s commercial was controversial.
Here’s what you need to know about the women featured in the Nike Super Bowl commercial, the controversy behind it and how social media reacted.
Who was in the 2025 Nike Super Bowl ad?
Nike picked nine of its signed female athletes to star in the commercial:
- Sha’Carri Richardson
- Caitlin Clark
- Sabrina Ionescu
- Jordan Chiles
- JuJu Watkins
- Alexia Putellas
- Sophia Smith Wilson
- Aryna Sabalenka
- A’ja Wilson
The women are also featured on a shirt the company released on Sunday that’s already selling out.
Richardson is a big name in the track and field world. She earned her first Olympic gold and silver medals last summer in the 4×100 meter relay and 100-meter events, respectively.
Clark is the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer and has taken the basketball world by storm. Clark’s generational talent has helped bring new interest to women’s basketball at both the college and professional level. She has her own Nike signature shoe in the works, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Ionescu won the 2024 WNBA Finals with the New York Liberty. The three-time WNBA All-Star and Olympic gold medalist was also a No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft like Clark.
Chiles is a two-time Olympian and has won both gold and silver team medals with the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team.
Watkins is a rising star in college basketball and is in her sophomore season at USC. She was named the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year.
Putellas is a Spanish soccer player for Barcelona. She is the first two-time Ballon d’Or Féminin winner and the first player to win The Best FIFA Women’s Player in two consecutive years, according to ESPN.
Sophia Wilson is a standout forward in the NWSL and for the U.S. women’s national soccer team. She’s a former NWSL MVP and last summer, helped lead the U.S. women to their first Olympic gold medal in 12 years.
Sabalenka is the WTA’s No. 1 women’s singles tennis player in the world — a feat Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova and Naomi Osaka have never won, per the WTA.
A’ja Wilson is a two-time WNBA champion, three-time WNBA MVP and six-time WNBA All-Star. She released her first Nike signature shoe, the A’One, last week.
The controversy behind Nike’s Super Bowl ad
Not everyone was a fan of the new Nike Super Bowl ad.
Some critics questioned how the commercial fit with the company’s past treatment of pregnant women athletes.
In 2019, Olympian Allyson Felix shared in a New York Times piece that Nike “wanted to pay me 70 percent less than before” in negotiations to renew her contract following her first pregnancy.
Felix said she’d accept it if that’s what the company thought she was worth at the time but would not accept “the enduring status quo around maternity.”
“I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn’t be punished if I didn’t perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth. I wanted to set a new standard. If I, one of Nike’s most widely marketed athletes, couldn’t secure these protections, who could?” she wrote.
Nike declined, Felix said, leading the track star to sign with Athleta.
Simone Biles has also left Nike for Athleta, telling The Wall Street Journal in 2021, “I felt like it wasn’t just about my achievements, it’s what I stood for and how they were going to help me use my voice and also be a voice for females and kids.”
Controversial Nike ad from the past
This year’s ad isn’t the first Nike Super Bowl ad to cause a stir.
The company’s last Super Bowl ad in 1998 featured athletes in the nude, including basketball players David Robinson and Lisa Leslie, Olympians Michael Johnson and Suzy Hamilton and soccer star Ronaldo.
The commercial was trying to portray Nike apparel as “an added layer of skin that can help people compete more effectively in a range of sports,” The Associated Press reported at the time.
“Crafty camera angles do the work of shorts and halters and protect the athletes from embarrassing exposure,” the AP noted.
Nike had to make “minor modifications in the commercial, involving shading,” for the ad to air on NBC, the network airing the Super Bowl.
Here’s how social media reacted
The reaction to Nike’s Super Bowl ad in 2025 was mixed on social media.
The commercial drew praise from some, including Maria Shriver, but also criticism, including from former “Sunday Night Football” sideline reporter Michele Tafoya.
Here are some of the reactions on social media to Nike’s 2025 Super Bowl ad.