April marks the month of the 2024 NFL draft, a time to check out the future stars of your favorite teams, escape from the daily grind, and most importantly, break free of politics and ads — except one. Joe Biden’s campaign is running a 20-second ad that shows President Biden smiling with the Kansas City Chiefs. The ad also features a 2020 clip of Donald Trump saying, “Nobody cares about football.”
The ad ends by urging viewers to “make the right pick in November.”
The Biden campaign also posted the ad on X, formerly Twitter, where people could pause it and examine each frame.
Eagle-eyed critics determined that a picture of Biden smiling and holding a football was not taken in the U.S. Instead, the image was captured in Australia in 2016, when Biden met with AFL executives for a game between the Carlton Blues and West Coast Eagles at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
So, why is Biden running an ad during the draft? Demographics.
While 2024 numbers aren’t out yet, according to SportsMediaWatch, the 2023 NFL draft had ratings for viewers aged 18-49 that were nearly on par with 2023’s NCAA men’s basketball title game. That demographic is key for Biden because a Harvard poll of registered voters aged 18-29 found that Biden is leading Trump 50%-37%.
Biden needs to retain those voters to win the election. However, his support is decreasing because of his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Democratic primary voters in Michigan and Wisconsin made their disapproval known by casting more than 150,000 uncommitted and uninstructed votes in those two primaries. Biden’s events have also been interrupted by protestors calling for an immediate cease-fire.
Additionally, Biden is trying to reach younger voters on TikTok, but he’s receiving criticism for that too. Biden just signed a bill to ban the platform in the U.S. if its Chinese parent company fails to sell it. So, some of the young voters he’s attempting to attract accuse him of being hypocritical.
