The Super Bowl and the Amazon: Turning Attention into Action

San Francisco

February 5, 2026

The NFL and major sporting platforms have the potential to become the world’s largest advocates for Amazon forest protection – uniting billions of sports fans behind a campaign to safeguard the planet’s most vital ecosystem. In 2025 alone, a campaign launched on the outskirts of the 2025 Super Bowl received over 90 million views and helped mobilize over $10 million in new Amazon-focused philanthropy. Now it needs broader participation from leagues, teams, players, and corporate partners to turn attention into tangible action.

Nearly 2800 years ago, in Athens, Greece, the Olympic games did something radical. They halted wars to guarantee safe passage for athletes. How can we harness the power of athletics today, to promote the most important causes of tomorrow?

The sports industry enjoys enormous viewership, attracting over 30% of live TV viewing.  The Super Bowl itself is the most watched event in the US, attracting audiences of over 125 million fans.  

Though fewer people know, the Amazon forest also has super star status.  It is home to perhaps up to 30% of the world’s species, and serves as a central pump of the global water cycle, propagating rain patterns around the world.

The marketing muscle of the NFL and the Super Bowl could some day help protect the entire Amazon.  One related effort started back in 2019.

Founded in 2011 with the UN in New York, NEXUS has grown to become one of the largest global networks of next generation philanthropists and investors.  In 2019, through relationships with team owning families, NEXUS partnered with Accenture and Oceanic Global to help the 2020 Super Bowl become 98% free of single-use plastics.  The  SUPR (Single Use Plastics Reduction) Initiative worked with the Miami Dolphins and other major teams (Falcons, Hawks, Pirates, Bucks, Jazz), hosted a festive launch with Starwood Hotel CEO Barry Sternlicht, and drew major media coverage (MH, FC, NG), but stopped when the pandemic hit.

Last year, NEXUS and the Amazon Investor Coalition (AIC) started a new effort, but this time to help protect the Amazon.  They sponsored the 2025 Leigh Steinberg Super Bowl Party in New Orleans and presented a vision for collective action to an audience of NFL owners, staff, players, alumni and other VIPs.  In August, they partnered with MrBeast to launch #TeamWater, received over 90 million views, mobilized $10 million in new Amazonian philanthropy, and enrolled Jason Momoa, Shawn Mendes, Mark Ruffalo and other celebrities to launch Amazonia Calling to promote indigenous demands for the COP30 climate conference in the Brazilian Amazon.  Today, Amazonia Calling is the largest celebrity coalition of its kind for the Amazon, and it needs the NFL to reach its goals.

Conservation of the Amazon forest deserves to be a top priority for the NFL,  and the world.  The NFL has identified Brazil as one of its top markets for expansion, and parts of the Western United States could see precipitation drop by 50% if the Amazon collapsed into a dry grassland ecosystem.  Maintaining historic rain patterns, preventing droughts and improving the rule of law in the Amazon region are concerns of US national security and NFL players and fans alike.  The forest is a giant air conditioner, producing massive cloud cover, and keeping the region cool.  In 2014, FIFA mandated water breaks for certain World Cup games in Brazil due to concerns about heat. A few years later, the government created emergency water access rules for large events after a student died from heat exhaustion at a Taylor Swift concert. Overheating is a concern for all athletes in games, training and practices alike.

In February of 2024, a new study revealed that due to excessive deforestation the Amazon forest may be facing a tipping point, beyond which the forest would dry up and burn away.  To prevent it from happening, the study suggests we need to reforest 5% of the region.  The Amazon is responsible for 50% of the freshwater discharge that runs into the Atlantic ocean.  That flow helps to drive the Gulf Stream, maintain the weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere, and is at risk.  The NFL and all sports leagues depend on the forest, and are well positioned to help.

The good news is that we don’t need eternal philanthropy to protect the Amazon. In many cases, the forest is worth more alive and standing, than cut and burned – if markets reward forest-positive production. If we help shift market incentives in the region, we can move parts of the deforestation economy toward forest-based livelihoods. After a period of readiness on the ground, strategic marketing and demand signals can accelerate that transition. By increasing demand for forest-positive products – such as Brazil nuts and natural rubber – and by expanding local ecotourism, communities can grow income streams that keep forests standing. The evidence suggests these transitions can unlock significant economic upside while restoring ecosystems and strengthening water cycles and biodiversity resilience.

How could the NFL help?  

  1. NFL players, alumni and teams can join and promote Amazonia Calling on social media
  2. NFL fashion pioneers can promote procurement contracts for textiles woven by indigenous communities
  3. Stadiums can seek out certifications and demand deforestation-free food concessions 
  4. Stadiums can promote consumption of historic products that help protect the forest like acai and Brazil nuts, but also new products that aren’t yet widely known like cupuacu, buriti, and camu-camu, which are sold by companies like Amayu.
  5. Stadiums can swap out supply chains to source from Amazonian brands that foster agroforestry and reforestation to grow products like chocolate, coffee, guava, mangos, papaya, pepper, Baru nuts, and more (full list).

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The vision of partnering with the NFL to help protect the Amazon may be an idea whose time has come.  The Seattle Seahawks will play in the Super Bowl this year and the owner, Jody Allen, sister of the late Paul Allen, is a leading philanthropist and supporter of indigenous women’s leadership in the Amazon, through her philanthropy Daughters for Earth. There is much speculation about the eventual sale of the Seahawks for philanthropy.  If home-field advantage is a real boost for players, then perhaps so is the idea that your team could be sold to protect the greatest biodiversity hotspot on the planet.  Perhaps the pageantry of Olympic athletes that halted wars, in ancient Greece, is a fitting analogy for the purpose-driven NFL athletes today who are fighting to win and halt Amazon deforestation. 

This year, the Amazon Investor Coalition and Amazonia Calling will again sponsor the annual Leigh Steinberg Super Bowl Party to tell the stories of Daughters for Earth, Artists for Amazonia, Amazon Watch, and other indigenous territorial defenders, while helping to spread the word, and hoping more NFL teams will join the fight to protect the world’s largest tropical forest.  

If you’re involved in the NFL or another sport, how could you help?

For more, visit www.amazoniacalling.org