Tubi fakes Super Bowl viewers with commercial. ‘Our entire living room was scrambling’
The horror of thinking you sat on the remote and changed the channel played out for many Super Bowl viewers during one memorable fake-out.
Tubi, the ad-supported streaming service owned by Fox, enlisted Fox Sports commentators Greg Olsen and Kevin Burkhardt for the commercial that aired during the fourth quarter of the game on Sunday, Feb. 12.
“We can’t be forgettable in this moment,” Tubi chief marketing officer Nicole Parlapiano told Adweek. “It’s our coming out. I want to shock, and I want to surprise, and I want to get attention.”
Attention they received, as the 15-second commercial made it look like the channel was being switched as the broadcasters called the game. The commercial showed a fake Super Bowl broadcast being switched over to the Tubi TV app with someone searching through the interface.
Tubi even gloated about the prank on YouTube
“No, you didn’t sit on the remote. But on Super Bowl Sunday, we fooled audiences into thinking they did,” Tubi said.
But not everyone was thrilled.
Some people commented on social media that they were looking for the remote on the couch, while others blamed their viewing partners.
“Our entire living room was scrambling trying to figure out who was sitting on the remote,” one Twitter user said.
“That Tubi commercial came on & I yelled at every single person in this room,” another commenter said.
This story was originally published February 13, 2023 at 9:00 AM.