Shane Gillis Steals Peyton Manning's Place in Bud Light's NFL Ad

Nothing gets between a football fan and a fresh Bud Light, not even a hardwood floor covered in broken French doors.

Bud Light, the Official Beer Sponsor of the NFL, kicked off the new season on August 11 with a national campaign.

Two new spots star longtime brand partners Shane Gillis and Peyton Manning.

Anomaly NY handled the creative on the ads, "The Move" and "Armchair," directed by Damien Shatford through Biscuit Filmworks.

Both show how far Gillis and Manning will go for a beer on gameday.

Alongside the new work, Bud Light is bringing back its limited-edition team cans across its 27 NFL team partnerships.

Each can features a scannable QR code that unlocks prizes ranging from a month of NFL+ Premium to game tickets.

"The NFL season is Bud Light season," Todd Allen, SVP of Marketing for Bud Light, shared in a press release.

"With two hilarious new commercials featuring Shane and Peyton and our iconic team cans giving fans a chance to upgrade their experience all season, we're making it fun to fan."

The push extends a run with the league that Bud Light now dates to nearly three decades.

Each team's beer can requires a separate co-branding deal with the club, which is why five of the 32 teams sit out the lineup.

Bar Fights and Broken Doors

In "The Move," a packed bar full of NFL fans, including Manning himself, jostles for the bartender's attention.

Gillis slides in and steals Manning's spot at the rail, prompting a familiar shuffle of leaning, reaching, and elbowing.

Soon enough, Manning recruits a fellow fan to help him stretch out fully horizontal across the bar to place an order for both of them.

"Armchair" moves the action to a home watch party, where Manning refuses to give up his recliner for a beer run.

He ends up dragging the entire chair with him, crashing through a pair of French doors along the way.

Manning called the work his favorite NFL kickoff tradition yet.

"This Bud Light campaign truly captures what it means to go great lengths for your team and showcases how fun it is to fan during the NFL season," he said.

Both spots are airing across linear, streaming, and digital platforms starting this week.

The retro-styled team cans return alongside them.

Fans 21+ can also enter the Bud Light Football Faceoff National Contest at locations nationwide for a shot at Super Bowl LXI tickets.

A Season Built for Sponsors

Football is drawing bigger crowds than it has in decades, which raises the stakes for brands trying to stand out during the broadcast.

The 2025 NFL regular season averaged18.7 million viewers per game, the second-highest mark on record and up 10% from the year before, according to Front Office Sports.

The Thanksgiving matchup between the Chiefs and Cowboys alone drew more than 57 million viewers, the most-watched regular-season game in league history.

Bud Light wants the cans in hand before kickoff, since the QR mechanic only pays off across a full season of scanning.

The brand has been applying the same logic to other points on the NFL calendar.

Its NFL Draft keg wall in Pittsburgh poured a free draft every time a team went on the clock, with the same offer running in nine partner cities.

Three takeaways stand out for marketers:

• Recurring talent builds shorthand: Bringing back Manning lets the joke start faster since audiences already know the relationship.
• Physical comedy travels across formats: A sight gag like the armchair scene cuts through cluttered gameday ad breaks better than dialogue-heavy spots.
• Packaging can extend the campaign: Turning team cans into a QR-code prize mechanic keeps the promotion alive on store shelves long after the ads stop airing.

A fixed season schedule lets all three work together, giving brands a rare case where creative and product design get planned against the same calendar.

Our Take: Does Bud Light Still Own Football?

At this point, it's almost essential for either Gills or Manning to star in a Bud Light ad, and the spots now work as a signal of continuity as much as comedy.

We'd argue that Bud Light still owns football, and the reason has little to do with how much beer it sells.

Michelob Ultra passed Bud Light in U.S. volume sales in September 2025, and Modelo Especial still leads the category on dollar sales.

Anheuser-Busch is running its most valuable sports property through a brand its own portfolio has outgrown.

The celebrity formula protects that position, since Manning and Gillis give fans a reason to watch without dragging 2023 back into the frame.

Bud Light wins the word association when someone thinks of football and beer, and holding it is the strongest asset left in its brand strategy.

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