SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
January, 28 2015, 11:45am EDT
Contact:
Josh Golin: 339-970-4240; josh@commercialfreechildhood.org
NFL Marketing to Kids is Out of Bounds
Groundbreaking report exposes league’s intensive and harmful campaign to target children
WASHINGTON
At a time when NFL profits are threatened by declining participation in youth football, a groundbreaking new report from Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood exposes how much the National Football League has ramped up its direct marketing to children. OUT OF BOUNDS: The NFL's Intensive Campaign to Target Children details how the league advertises to children: online, on children's television stations, in schools, and in partnership with trusted nonprofits and government agencies serving kids and families. The NFL's new strategies to woo kids have serious consequences, including increased sedentary screen time, exposure to junk-food marketing, loss of valuable instructional time in school, encouraging gambling behaviors, and exposure to the league's off-the-field controversies.
"Even as parents are rightly concerned about letting kids play football, the NFL is threatening children's wellbeing by employing a 360deg marketing strategy to maximize its current audience and ensure a host of future fans," said report author Josh Golin, CCFC's Associate Director. "The league's focus on children is designed to immerse kids in sedentary video games and other media, sell them on junk food, and hook them on fantasy sports."
Among the report's findings:
- Encouraging kids to play fantasy football is a major component of the NFL's marketing to children, despite the fact that playing fantasy sports is a form of gambling. The league offers cash and other prizes for its fantasy contests, giving kids a vested interest in the outcome of NFL games. The league even promotes fantasy football in elementary schools. Gambling at a young age is a risk factor for problem gambling later in life.
- The NFL relies extensively on government agencies and trusted nonprofits to promote its brand to children. Fuel Up to Play 60, a joint NFL initiative with the National Dairy Council (NDC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to promote healthy eating and physical activity, allows NFL marketing to reach nearly two-thirds of all U.S. school children. The initiative's wellness messages are completely undermined by the NFL's promotion of sedentary screen time to kids and its partnerships with McDonald's and other purveyors of junk food.
- The NFL markets media properties aimed at children in order to promote interest in its teams, its players, and its televised broadcasts. The league maintains an online marketing hub for children six to 13 called NFLRUSH with 3 million registered users. It also created NFL Rush Zone, an animated television series currently on Nicktoons, that is actually a program-length commercial for the NFL.
- The NFL has produced and distributed branded teaching materials designed for elementary school classrooms. These materials claim to teach subjects like math and language arts but their real purpose is to promote the NFL's brand to children. All the vocabulary words in one set of lesson plans are either basic football terms like "huddle" or "quarterback," NFL football team names, or characters on the NFL's Nicktoons show.
- Children exposed to NFL marketing are also routinely exposed to the league's use of derogatory racial terms like "Redskin" as well as players who are involved in its off-the-field incidents. The league's elementary school materials make references to "Redskins." The cartoon NFL Rush Zone actually features a character who is referred to as a "Redskin." In addition, guest stars on NFL Rush Zone include Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, the players involved in the NFL's most publicized domestic violence incidents.
"The NFL is a league that produces adult content and adult controversies," said Cara Wilking, an author of the report and a public health attorney. "It has used its star power to infiltrate schools, government agencies, and trusted non-profits to target kids in ways that expose them to inappropriate content ranging from games that encourage problem gambling to alcohol advertising. This report demonstrates the pitfalls of partnering with the NFL and makes it clear that it's time for organizations that care about children to sever ties with them."
The report demands that the NFL stop targeting children. It also calls on the NFL to immediately stop promoting fantasy football to kids, on Nickelodeon to stop airing NFL Rush Zone and other NFL-affiliated media properties on its networks, and for educators to stop using all NFL-sponsored educational materials.
To download the full report, please visit https://commercialfreechildhood.org/sites/default/files/outofbounds.pdf. The report's executive summary can be read here.
Additional Quotes:
Ray Halbritter - Oneida Nation Representative and Nation Enterprises CEO about the Washington NFL Team Name: "The marketing of this racial slur has had - and continues to have - very serious cultural, political, and public health consequences for Native American children across the country. The NFL is a publicly subsidized $9-billion-a-year brand with global reach, and it is using those public resources and that brand to promote a dictionary defined racial slur. Native American children do not deserve to be treated as targets of a racial slur by one of the most famous and powerful brands in the world. They deserve to be treated as what they are: Americans."
Ryan J. Martin, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Education and Promotion at East Carolina University: "It is certainly concerning that the NFL is actively promoting fantasy football with cash prizes to children. In our study, we found that college students who participate in fantasy sports for money were more likely to experience gambling-related problems."
Michele Simon, J.D., M.P.H. - President of Eat Drink Politics: "Far from sending healthy messages, the Fuel Up to Play 60 program heavily promotes high-sugar dairy products, like chocolate milk, in direct conflict with the federal government's own dietary guidelines and common sense. In addition, Fuel Up to Play 60 promotes the NFL - and by extension all of its junk-food partners, including McDonald's, Pepsi, Frito Lay, and Mars - to a majority of U.S school children. It's time for the USDA to sack this ill-conceived and harmful program."
Casey Hinds - Parent of two and blogger, US Healthy Kids: "The NFL should work on fixing its own problems instead of helping McDonald's tell kids fast food is lovin'."
Fairplay, formerly known as Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, educates the public about commercialism's impact on kids' wellbeing and advocates for the end of child-targeted marketing. Fairplay organizes parents to hold corporations accountable for their marketing practices, advocates for policies to protect kids, and works with parents and professionals to reduce children's screen time.
LATEST NEWS
UNICEF Says Children 'Being Pulled From Under Rubble' in Lebanon After Israeli Bombardment
The United Nations Children's Fund warned that Israel's continued assault on Lebanon "poses a grave risk to the ceasefire and the efforts toward a lasting and comprehensive peace."
Apr 10, 2026
A United Nations agency said late Thursday that Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon earlier this week killed or wounded more than 180 children, a statement issued as the Israeli military vowed to continue assailing the war-ravaged country—potentially derailing ceasefire efforts in Iran and across the region.
The UN Children's Fund, widely known as UNICEF, said the toll from Israel's assault on Wednesday brought the total number of children killed or wounded in Lebanon since March 2 to at least 600. The agency said it is "receiving reports of children being pulled from under the rubble, while others remain missing and separated from their families."
"Many are experiencing trauma, having lost loved ones, their homes, and any sense of safety," UNICEF said. "Across the country, more than one million people have been uprooted, including an estimated 390,000 children, many for the second, third, or even fourth time."
UNICEF went on to echo growing concerns in the region, and around the world, that Israel's continued bombing and invasion of Lebanon "poses a grave risk to the ceasefire and the efforts toward a lasting and comprehensive peace."
"The children in Lebanon cannot be left behind," the UN agency said.
UNICEF's statement came as the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces said Lebanon is the Israeli military's "primary combat" zone and that the IDF is "in a state of war, we are not in a ceasefire."
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both insisted that Lebanon was not included in the Iran ceasefire agreement announced late Tuesday—a claim that Iranian leaders and Pakistan's prime minister, who is mediating peace talks, have said is false.
On Thursday, Trump said Netanyahu agreed during a phone call to "low-key it" in Lebanon. But in a recorded statement addressed to residents of northern Israel on Thursday, Netanyahu declared: “There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. We continue to strike Hezbollah with force, and we will not stop until we restore your security.”
Netanyahu's decision to escalate Israel's attacks on Lebanon—killing hundreds of people and leveling entire neighborhoods—just hours after Trump announced the ceasefire deal with Iran fit with a longstanding pattern of the Israeli government undercutting diplomacy.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, wrote for The Intercept on Thursday that Israel "has worked ceaselessly to prevent any off-ramp from confrontation between the US and Iran," noting that "in 1995, when Iran and the US flirted with economic rapprochement by opening the Iran oil industry to American investment and development, Israel and AIPAC lobbied Congress and President Bill Clinton to block it."
"Netanyahu is widely thought to benefit from wars—from Gaza to Iran and now, most critically, in Lebanon—to shore up his political fortunes. He faces an election in October, and losing could lead to the revival of corruption charges that might land him in prison," Abdi noted. "The question now may unfortunately not be whether Iran and the US can find a compromise. Instead, the fate of the global economy and, not least, Iranians themselves, could rest between Netanyahu and Trump, who faces his own political challenges in midterm elections this year."
US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote Thursday that "Netanyahu urged Trump to start this war, now Trump must demand he help end it."
"Who's calling the shots here?" Van Hollen asked.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In Yet Another Industry Handout, Trump EPA 'Just Took a Sledgehammer' to Coal Ash Rules
"Ultimately, if this rule is finalized, human health will suffer, and taxpayers will be left with the cost of cleaning up their rivers and drinking water."
Apr 09, 2026
Amid mounting calls for the removal of US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA chief on Thursday announced proposed changes to coal ash rules, which critics blasted as another gift to polluters at the expense of public health.
Officially called coal combustion residuals (CCR), "coal ash—the toxic byproduct of burning coal—contains hazardous pollutants, including arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, radium, and selenium, which are linked to serious health harms such as cancer, heart disease, and brain damage, among other lasting impacts," noted the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Specifically, as The Associated Press reported, the EPA "proposed easing standards for monitoring and protecting groundwater near some coal ash sites, rolling back rules forcing the cleanup of entire coal properties instead of just places where ash was dumped. The revisions would also make it easier to reuse coal ash for other purposes."
While Zeldin claimed the "commonsense changes to the CCR regulations reflect EPA's commitment to restoring American energy dominance, strengthening cooperative federalism, and accommodating unique circumstances at certain CCR facilities," Environmental Protection Network's Marc Boom responded that "letting companies avoid cleaning up waste sites that may be leaching toxic metals into groundwater and nearby waterways, while weakening protections and accountability, is not common sense."
"EPA's top priority should be protecting people's health, not sacrificing it for corporate expediency," argued Boom, senior director of public affairs at the group, which is made up of former agency staff. "EPA may call these safeguards 'impractical,' but anyone living downstream of coal ash sites holding thousands of tons of waste knows that requiring cleanup and monitoring is a necessary and basic standard."
NRDC senior attorney Becky Hammer called the pending rollback just "the latest in a long, long, line of Trump administration giveaways to fossil fuels industries," which have also included repealing EPA rules that targeted chemical pollution from coal-fired power plants, declaring a national energy emergency, and scrapping the 2009 "endangerment finding" that underpins all federal climate regulations.
Other advocacy organizations were similarly critical of Thursday's announcement. Daniel Estrin, Waterkeeper Alliance's general counsel and legal director, pointed out that "coal ash is contaminating water at nearly every active and retired coal plant in the US."
"By gutting these safeguards, EPA is abandoning its duty to protect impacted communities by allowing preventable contamination of our rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater," he said. "The longer the coal industry is allowed to delay closing and cleaning up its toxic waste sites, the more difficult and costly it becomes to fix the damage. By failing to enforce the law, EPA is letting polluters continue harming people and wildlife without accountability."
Like Estrin and Hammer, Earthjustice senior counsel Lisa Evans framed that proposal as "yet another handout to the coal power industry at the expense of our health, water, and wallets," and warned of the dangers of delaying closure and cleanup. She said that "ultimately, if this rule is finalized, human health will suffer, and taxpayers will be left with the cost of cleaning up their rivers and drinking water."
Although "the Trump administration just took a sledgehammer to the health protections in place for toxic coal pollution," Evans added, "Earthjustice has successfully defended these safeguards in court and will do so again."
Nick Torrey, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has secured commitments to clean up over 270 million tons of coal ash in US communities, similarly said that "doing the bidding of industrial polluters instead of protecting ordinary families and clean water is shameful, but we are ready to keep fighting against coal ash pollution."
"Letting coal-burning utilities set the agenda has been a disaster for communities across the South, resulting in coal ash spills and hundreds of families forced to live on bottled water for years under the threat of coal ash pollution," Torrey highlighted. "The Trump administration and coal ash polluters want to take us back to the bad old days of arsenic, lead, and mercury from coal ash contaminating our water."
In addition to facing a flurry of lawsuits over policies prioritizing the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry—whose campaign cash helped President Donald Trump return to the White House last year—the administration has recently been hit with demands to remove Zeldin from more than 160 advocacy groups and nearly 300 health experts.
"This EPA's actions to put polluters first, at the expense of our health, are dangerous and will be deadly," states the health experts' open letter, organized and released Thursday by the Climate Action Campaign. "Administrator Zeldin has abandoned his sworn duty and must be held accountable for his agenda."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Americans to Pay $1,096 Extra at Gas Pump Due to Trump-Israel War on Iran: Markey
“America’s small businesses, workers, and families are really feeling pain at the pump—all thanks to Trump’s illegal war on Iran,” the Massachusetts Democrat said.
Apr 09, 2026
An analysis published Thursday by the office of US Sen. Ed Markey estimates that the average American motorist will pay nearly $1,100 extra for gasoline in 2026 due to President Donald Trump's war of choice on Iran.
"The data highlights a worsening affordability crisis, with the average American family facing an annual increase of $1,096 this year if gas prices remain at $4.14 per gallon—a shocking increase of $1.16 per gallon since Trump launched his war on Iran in February," Markey's (D-Mass.) office said.
"These numbers are likely an underestimate," the analysis notes. "Many analysts predict gasoline prices will rise higher without a permanent end to the war. Instead of investing in energy independence, Trump has done everything in his power to destroy American-made affordable clean energy... and double down on the fossil fuels that are now skyrocketing in price."
"As Americans pay more at the pump, fossil fuel industry executives profit," Markey's office said. "During Trump’s first year in office, the five largest oil companies—ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP—made more than $75 billion dollars in profits."
Fossil fuel interests spent $445 million to help elect Trump and other Republicans in 2024. And while some Big Oil executives are reportedly upset that the ceasefire agreement with Iran apparently includes Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz and the power to charge tolls to tankers passing through the vital waterway, industry executives sold a reported $1.4 billion in shares before and during the war that they may subsequently buy back during market dips fueled by the volatility caused by Trump's actions.
“America’s small businesses, workers, and families are really feeling pain at the pump—all thanks to Trump’s illegal war on Iran," Markey, the ranking member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, said in a statement introducing the analysis. "Instead of delivering real relief to the American people, Trump is doubling down on his reckless economic policies, which are only driving up energy prices, enriching his oil and gas buddies, and worsening the affordability crisis for everyone else."
“In uncertain times like these, gas prices go up like a rocket but come down like a feather," he added. "This administration must get serious about alleviating the crisis he alone created, or risk further throttling families’ finances and putting even more pain on Main Street.”
A Pew Research Center survey published earlier this week revealed that gas prices are Americans' biggest concern about the Iran War, with 69% worried about higher fuel costs. By comparison, 61% said they were concerned about sending ground troops to invade Iran, 59% fretted over high casualties among US troops, and 56% said they fear a terror attack on the United States.
This isn't the first time that Markey has shined a spotlight on the economic harm to American families caused by the actions of a president who campaigned upon core promises of lower consumer prices—including gasoline—and no new wars. Last month, Markey asked the Bureau of Labor Statistics to “immediately undertake and publish a comprehensive analysis of the likely consumer price impacts” of the war over the next 6-12 months.
Our nation is at a moral crossroads.Trump asked Congress for over 1 trillion to fund the Department of Defense and his war of choice. To get it, MAGA Republicans want to defund childcare. Healthcare. Education. I won't stand for that.
[image or embed]
— Ed Markey (@edmarkey.bsky.social) April 9, 2026 at 3:31 PM
Markey's analysis came on the same day that the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies published a report estimating that the average American taxpayer gave $4,000 to the federal government last year “for militarism and its support systems."
That cost is likely to rise even further if Congress approves Trump's request for a record $1.5 trillion US military budget for the next fiscal year.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular