Uber Eats 'proves' football is a conspiracy to sell food — record orders, Grand Effie

Uber Eats became the NFL's official on-demand food-delivery sponsor, but the media buy alone was not moving orders. Data showed Uber Eats conversions surged when its ads ran beside food-merchant ads in the same break — craving, then delivery. So instead of more sponsorship impressions, Uber Eats and agency Special US gave Americans a reason for the craving: football, they argued, is a decades-long conspiracy to sell food.

Every element of the game became 'evidence': yellow goalposts like fries, a halftime show sponsored by fruit, players named Pepper, Ham and Rice, and a stadium — Caesars Superdome — named after a salad. Each proof carried a bespoke gameday deal, from cheesehead jokes tied to pizza to Martha Stewart's Super Bowl Caesar Salad sold exclusively in the app after banners renamed the stadium 'Caesars Salad?'.

The conspiracy climaxed at Super Bowl LIX with 'A Century of Cravings', in which Matthew McConaughey rewrote football history as the National Foodball League. The platform then returned for the 2025–26 NFL season with Bradley Cooper's 'Bradley's Mission' and Parker Posey teasers, keeping the joke running across broadcast, social and in-game integrations.

Judged on results, the campaign is credited by WARC with a 672% increase in average weekly first-time orders and 310,000 incremental Super Bowl orders, and by its One Show entry with 3x app sessions quarter-over-quarter and $225M in earned-media value. It took the Grand Effie at the 2026 Effie Awards US Gala, plus Golds in Delivery Services and Brand Integration & Entertainment Partnerships.