Racelighting through branded entertainment: the historical case of the National Football League

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to draw on the American National Football League (NFL’s) century-plus history, as documented in media meta-texts, to examine how race is deployed in its branded entertainment (BE) marketing strategy. In this viewpoint article, the authors extend “racelighting” (RL) as a conceptual framework to illuminate approaches in which BE marketing strategies – often conveyed as neutral or progressive – leverage racial stereotypes to exploit the cultural, social and political capital of black and other persons of color to align with the commercial interests of dominant groups in ways that ultimately undermine progressive movements. Design/methodology/approach While football game outcomes tell the narrative of NFL-BE as surface text, meta-texts comprise the plethora of marketing content produced about the games and the league. This paper examines the topic using a thematic analysis perspective and archival evidence, classifying media meta-texts along three binary, coded themes for distribution channels, forms of hegemonic control and marketing strategy. This study compiled 20 articles from the Crisis magazine (1910–1960), 25 from Ebony magazine (1945–2026), 21 from Jet magazine (1950–2015) and six transcripts of audio/visual NFL-branded content (2014–2026), organized chronologically under historical thematic categories. These 72 meta-texts include the following US time periods: the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era (1910–1949), the Civil Rights era (1950–1979), the rise of neoliberal colorblindness era (1980–2008) and the post-racial era (2009–2026). Findings Through historical analysis aided by semiotics, the authors illuminate how RL has adapted over the NFL’s century-long history to maintain narrative control and secure its dominant cultural and hegemonic position. Grounding their analysis through the lens of Afro-pessimism that advocates the centering of black voices and perspectives, they reveal the NFL’s reality-distorting RL-BE strategy across four distinct historical eras: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, colorblind neoliberalism and post-racial politics. Even when the NFL’s BE alliances and strategies seem neutral or progressive on the surface, they demonstrate how they act to support hegemonic commercial interests, sometimes in disguised manners. The findings elucidate the branding strategy of NFL entertainment as documented in black-oriented periodicals, which saw black resistance repurposed for white ends by leveraging the political and epistemological meanings of racial struggle to maintain control over historically dynamic processes. Implementing Racial Formation Theory (RFT) illustrates how the NFL impeded emancipatory racial projects over different historical eras, revealing direct applicability to the NFL’s BE strategy of RL. They assert that RL is the playbook for instrumentalizing racial projects for commercial aims, gains and power while maintaining white hegemony. Not only does this approach reinforce systemic racial oppression, but it also requires the strategic use of sport to appear to advance progressive aims only insofar as these harmonize with upper-class, white interests. There is strong evidence that these strategic successes have provided an exportable playbook for executing national projects of hegemonic racial formation in other domains of sport and BE globally, from historical to modern times. Research limitations/implications The century-plus case of the NFL marketing communications encourages marketing researchers and practitioners to interpret branding, diversity initiatives and public relations through longer historical narrative frames. They recommend that future research draw on this and related cases with similar historical depth to develop further insights into other important marketing themes germane to race in the marketplace, including but not limited to brand authenticity, stakeholder trust and reputation management. Practical implications In short, RL is the contemporary playbook for instrumentalizing racial projects for commercial aims, gains and power while maintaining white hegemony. Not only does this reinforce systemic racial oppression, but it also requires the strategic use of sport to appear to advance progressive aims only insofar as these harmonize with white interests. There is strong evidence that these successes have provided an exportable playbook for executing national projects of hegemonic racial formation in other global domains of sport and BE. Social implications The findings elucidate the branding strategy of NFL entertainment as documented in black-oriented periodicals, which saw black resistance repurposed for white ends by leveraging the political and epistemological meanings of racial struggle to maintain control over historically dynamic processes. Implementing RFT illustrates how the NFL impeded emancipatory racial projects over different historical eras, revealing direct applicability to the NFL’s BE strategy of RL. They assert that RL is the playbook for instrumentalizing racial projects for commercial aims, gains and power while maintaining white hegemony. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to demonstrate how “racelighting” operates as a BE marketing strategy. A close reading and examination of how more than a century of meta-textual media artifacts reflect the various eras of the everyday construction of racial projects as part of the NFL’s brand strategy. While recent work has examined RFT and the NFL, the historical dynamics of hegemonic consent and systemic RL remain largely underexplored in relation to marketing theory, entertainment practice and the history of marketing thought.