Considering how big a year 2026 will be for Marvel, with the return of Spider-Man and the release of the next Avengers movie, you’d be forgiven for expecting they’d go big on marketing. Both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday might be pretty far away (the former 6 months, the latter 10), but there are few guaranteed audiences like the one that tunes into the Big Game every year. Last year’s record-breaking viewing figures put 127.7 million sets of eyes on Super Bowl trailers, and this year’s projections are inevitably at the same level.
But despite Disney having presence during the game, Marvel Studios sat it out. No Avengers: Doomsday trailer, no Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer, and no Daredevil: Born Again Season 2. The latter would have been the most likely if time were the only factor, because it debuts on Disney+ in March and the studio has spent on TV trailers before (notably Moon Knight and The Falcon & The Winter Soldier), but no dice. It seems we’ll just have to wait a little longer, but there’s an interesting story here.
Marvel Just Broke Their Super Bowl Trend
Shockingly, this is the first time since 2010 that Marvel Studios hasn’t had a trailer at the Super Bowl. That’s largely why there were so many rumors of a last minute change of heart, or suspicions that Marvel were hiding their plans. But the studio is all about maximizing eyeballs on their marketing material, and cynicism might also point to the fact that all 4 of the previous Avengers: Doomsday trailers leaked ahead of their official releases. Suddenly gaining control of their leaks would be… uncharacteristic at this point.
As an interesting side point, these are the Super Bowl trailers by year since 2020, and there isn’t one listed that comes anywhere near the profile of either a Spider-Man movie or an Avengers one:
- 2020 – Black Widow (plus a sizzle reel for The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Loki)
- 2021 – The Falcon & The Winter Soldier
- 2022 – Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness & Moon Knight
- 2023 – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania/Heineken & Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
- 2024 – Deadpool & Wolverine
- 2025 – Thunderbolts* & Captain America: Brave New World
On top of that, Doomsday has now become the first Avengers movie not to have Super Bowl spot. That feels a little like a statement in itself, but then again, there are other factors at play here, and Doomsday is a very different release to its three crossover predecessors.
Why Spider-Man: Brand New Day & Avengers: Doomsday Skipped The Super Bowl
The biggest factors at play here are cost, necessity, and time. Super Bowl trailers reportedly cost $10 million for a paltry 30 seconds, which simply wouldn’t be enough to really satisfy fans (especially after Doomsday did 4 mini-teasers mere weeks ago). That cost now dictates that lots of studios release TV spots pointing viewers to longer online trailers to save a bit of their budget. And when you think about it, do either Doomsday or Spider-Man: Brand New Day even need more hype? Not at a $10m per 30 second price point, they don’t. Born Again Season 2 is an outlier, because I believe it could have done with a marketing boost, but Marvel’s purse controllers clearly weren’t as sure.
And then there’s time: Spider-Man: Brand New doesn’t come out for another 6 months, and while 3 of the MCU’s July releases (Captain America: The First Avenger, Black Widow, and Deadpool & Wolverine) did have Super Bowl spots, more of them didn’t. Ant-Man skipped 2015, Spider-Man: Homecoming wasn’t there in 2017, Ant-Man and the Wasp likewise wasn’t in 2018, nor Spider-Man: Far From Home, Thor: Love and Thunder in 2022, or The Fantastic Four: First Steps last year. All released in July, none appeared.
Avengers: Doomsday, meanwhile doesn’t release until December, putting it well outside the active attention window (it’s big enough that it doesn’t entirely matter, of course). Typically, Avengers movies release in April and May, which is why all four so far have been at the Super Bowl, and why Doomsday skipping it feels so frustrating. But the December date makes spending so much on marketing in February illogical.
You also have to take into account the fact that Marvel don’t control Spider-Man’s marketing – that’s Sony’s responsibility, and they don’t usually spend. It still feels more likely that Brand New Day‘s first trailer will be released alongside the theatrical release of animated movie Goat, which debuts on February 13.
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