“All bets are off — if you’re Tom Brady!”That’s the humorous premise for BetMGM’s Super Bowl ad, where the G.O.A.T. is informed that he can’t wager on the sports betting app.
In an exclusive preview of the ad, starring Vince Vaughn and cameos by Brady and hockey icon Wayne Gretzky, the Swingers star delivers the unfortunate news to the seven-time Super Bowl champion. “BetMGM is for everyone that loves sports betting, everyone, but Tom Brady,” Vaughn deadpans.
“Wait, what did I do?” an incredulous Brady asks, to which the actor replies: “The truth is, you’ve won too much, Tom, you let others have their turn.”
In a montage of potential gamblers — a tailgater, a woman smitten by Brady, and Brady’s former babysitter — they ask Vaughn if they can use BetMGM, and he approves them all. “As long as you’re not Tom Brady, you’re in,” he says.
Even when the football legend, disguised as “Tim Birdie, seven-time pool champion” in an early 2000s denim ensemble, asks if he can use the sports bettor, Vaughn doesn’t fall for the ruse.
You already know the answer, why you puttin’ us through it,” a bemused Vaughn — dining with Gretzky, a G.O.A.T. in his own right deemed eligible to use the site — says. For the ad’s creators, the opportunity to work with Brady was an easy bet to take.
“Our core idea is centered around the fact that BetMGM is for everyone (as long as they are of legal age!),” says Alex Zamiar, group creative director at ad agency Highdive, in an interview. “When Tom Brady signed on, we wanted to tap into his legacy and personality and tell a story that had never been told before.
Tom wins at everything he does, so we found the idea of him not being able to write funny. Luckily, he was game for making fun of himself and it went from there.”
The ad’s creative team also relished the opportunity to say no to Tom by upping the ante with another legendary athlete — Gretzky.
“The Super Bowl is all about surprising people and subverting expectations,” says Highdive’s Johnathan Richman. “So, once we had the idea of excluding Tom Brady from betting with BetMGM, we loved the idea of turning the screws on Tom even more by allowing another living legend to participate with a cameo from Wayne Gretzky.”
Zamiar points to the Brady-as-pool-shark scene as a metaphor for the commercial itself.“When we shot the pool scenes, Tom sunk almost every shot,” Zamiar said. “That guy is good at everything, that’s why we think the commercial is so relatable, at least the rest of us can have something he can’t.”