There are many ways to measure winners and losers in the Super Bowl.

The obvious from Super Bowl LX is that the Seahawks won and the Patriots lost. The less obvious: yellow Gatorade (splashed on the winning coach when orange was the pre-game favorite), heads (in the pre-game coin toss), and countless other propositions, including the multi-million dollar Super Bowl commercial curse.

Whether you liked Dunkin’s celebrity-packed ad or Budweiser’s Clydesdale-and-eagle pride-sweller or any other ad, the conversations about them today make those companies champs.

Investors who believe the Super Bowl Indicator – which posits that a victory by the NFC team is a precursor to a good calendar year for the market – also cheered the Seahawks’ win, although the indicator, as I wrote previously, is mostly disproven, imperfect, and subject to data mining to keep it relevant.

Into that mix, however, I have identified a Super Bowl jinx that applies to companies that buy Super Bowl advertising within 7 years of their initial public offering.

Shares in the six companies fitting that definition this year could wind up being big Super Bowl losers.

Anheuser-Busch

Super Bowl commercial jinx is bad news for stocks

Looking back at data since the late 1990s – when Super Bowl ads first topped the $1 million mark for a 30-second ad – some clear trends become evident:

• The stock price of nearly all companies that buy national ads during the Super Bowl game broadcast within seven years of their IPO falls significantly within two years of their first advertisement.

There are some logical reasons why this might be the case, including overspending on an ad that is more about vanity than return on investment, going public when the company and/or its industry is hot before cooling off, IPOs generally backtrack after an initial pop, and more.

•  This Super Bowl jinx doesn’t have to be a death knell.

There are many examples over the years of stocks that came back from even the steepest declines.

Carvana (CVNA), for example, held its IPO in 2017 and bought its first Super Bowl ad in 2022. The stock lost 97.5% of its value before 2022 was up, falling from $141 per share to $3.50; if, however, you rode through that incredible free-fall, the stock has nearly tripled in value from the price it had at that 2022 kickoff, topping $410 per share. (It is also, now, outside the 7-year window from its IPO, which may help.)

• But it can be.

Pets.com, FTX, Lifeminders and more are on the list of companies that splurged on Super Bowl ads on the way to imploding into oblivion.

• Two related corollaries: 1) The jinx is more pronounced when a company buys ads within five years of the IPO, but applies nearly as well to companies six and seven years past going public. 2) The jinx tends to build/continue if a company advertises year after year until it gets near the end of the too-close-to-the-IPO window.

This makes sense because the more mature a company becomes, the more a pricey Super Bowl ad might make good business sense.

Six stocks at risk of Super Bowl commercial curse in 2026

In Super Bowl LX, just six companies met the jinx criteria, but none were first-timers buying ads after an IPO. As a result, they could be turning the corner on the jinx moving to the other side. 

Here are the six stocks that could be 2026 losers of the Super Bowl IPO jinx:

1. Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) went public in January 2021 and did its first Super Bowl ad a year ago. The stock closed ahead of that game at $42.55 per share; by the time this year’s game rolled around, it was trading at $23.02, and it is off sharply in morning action on the first day after its ad appeared in Super Bowl LX.
2. Draft Kings (DKNG) held its IPO in April 2020, and bought its first Super Bowl ad the following year. It closed at $63.87 the Friday before that kickoff; it’s at about $27 now.
3. Rocket Mortgage (RKT) is owned by Rocket Cos., which held its IPO in August 2020. While Rocket advertised before its IPO—a common theme among Super Bowl advertisers that leads many to believe pre-IPO ads are trying to raise awareness to help fuel a post-IPO pop—closed at $21.63 before the Super Bowl in 2021. The stock stood at $12.26 by the 2022 game, and bottomed out later that year at $6.28. Proving that companies can overcome the jinx, it is up 3%, at last check, to $18.99 today.
4. Uber Technologies (UBER), the company, which went public in May 2019, did its first Super Bowl ad for Uber Eats in 2021. It was at roughly $58.40 on game day, and it was down to $21.81 less than 18 months later. The stock – now trading at roughly $74 – is another sign that rebounds are possible; it’s also leaving the seven-year post-IPO period, when buying Super Bowl ads should make investors itchy.
5. Maplebear (CART), the owner of Instacart, went public in September 2023 and bought its first Super Bowl ad on Feb. 9, 2025. The stock closed at $48.59 before that game; it is early in the jinx period and bought another ad that appeared during Sunday’s game; the stock is down to roughly $35/share.
6. Flutter Entertainment (FLUT), which owns FanDuel, went public at the end of January 2024, and was advertising in the Super Bowl two weeks later (FanDuel, which was acquired by Flutter in 2020, made its debut in the 2023 game). It stood at $216.85 before kickoff that year, was actually up to $258.04 by year’s end, but then the company advertised again in 2025; the stock peaked near $300 shortly after that game, but it has cratered in recent months and stood at roughly $150 entering Sunday’s game. (Note, FanDuel’s big ad was in the pre-game show this year, not in the game broadcast.)

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