Tight Ends, taters, and a title: Blake Stephens goes back-to-back

February 9, 2026

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Blake Stephens’ tight end can finally relax. He’s a champion again.

Unlike the snooze fest that was Super Bowl LX—a defensive struggle that saw the Seahawks methodically pull away from the Patriots—this year’s Fantasy Brands competition was a high-scoring, celeb-stuffed, AI-slop-filled battle for advertising glory.

Drafting a roster of Novartis (3rd overall), Lay’s (4th), Bud Light (10th), Bosch (11th), and Ring (22nd), Stephens’ aptly named team, The Reigning Champion, proved you don’t need a roster full of high-priced studs to win Fantasy Brands. You just need the right spuds.

Like Sam Darnold and a legion of Seahawk misfits, Stephens found tremendous value where others didn’t. Novartis and Lay’s, both just $15, were the clear steals of the draft and among the best values on the board this year. Ring didn’t hurt either, finishing as the second-highest performing $10 brand, trailing only Liquid I.V.

“BACK 2 BACK BABY!!” Stephens said when reached for comment, referencing his improbable second Fantasy Brands title in two years, now against a much deeper field. “Have Super Bowl ads become too predictable, or am I just that good?” he mused like a humble potato farmer. And for anyone speculating whether, like the hero of Lay’s “Last Harvest,” he might be hanging it up, Stephens was quick to shut that down: “I’ll be going for the three-peat in 2027.”

While the Super Bowl was a relative blowout, this one came down to the wire. Stephens finished tied with Lee Newman at exactly 483 points. Newman—no relation to Seinfeld’s Newman, aka Jurassic Park’s Dennis Nedry—drafted Xfinity (1st), Dunkin’ (2nd), Pepsi Zero Sugar (8th), and Novartis, which should have been enough to secure the win.

But a disappointing T-Mobile (34th), the less memorable Backstreet Boys ad of the night, ultimately did him in. That, plus the fact that Stephens nailed the combined final score of the game at 42 points, while Newman went with 50, proved to be the difference. All of which presumably left Newman screaming, “TELL ME WHY?!”

Tied for third and fourth with 463 points were Gera Gtz and game co-creator Dale Austin, who backflipped into the top five thanks in large part to Instacart’s (13th) Benson Boone-meets-Ben Stiller earworm of an ad. Rounding out the top five was Ryan Combs (462 points) who rode the NFL (5th) and Liquid I.V. (20th), the latter of which was the only brand priced at $10 or below to crack the top 20. It was also the only ad with singing toilets.

Of course, not everyone was feeling golden. Samantha Wexler finished last with just 244 points, her team doomed by the Kardashian Kurse. Fanatics Sportsbook, the highest-priced Rookie at $35, finished a disappointing 28th, the worst performance among all $35 brands. She was also one of only three players to invest in Svedka’s haunting robot ad, which—like all of humanity when the robots rise up and drink our blood out of martini glasses—finished dead last.

“I think we can all agree AI ads suck,” champion Blake Stephens added. At least something is still bringing us together as a nation.

View the full Leaderboard on our website.

Hold Onto Your Butts: Xfinity’s Jurassic Parody Tops Rankings

Because brands can’t score touchdowns (like either team in the first half of last night’s game), determining a winner in advertising is inherently subjective. So we rely on ratings from both audiences and critics. Think Rotten Tomatoes, but for ads.

Here’s how each group shaped the scores:

Audience: Fans voted via the USA Today Ad Meter, rating ads on a 1-5 scale. Brands were ranked by average score, with points awarded in reverse order: 59 for first, 58 for second, and so on. Budweiser topped this year’s Ad Meter.

Industry: The Super Clio winner, Anthropic, earned 59 points for first place. The remaining brands were scored by our industry panel, made up of some of the best creatives, strategists, and account leaders in advertising.

After combining both sets of ratings, the top 10 brands were:

  1. Xfinity (111, 6th audience, 3rd industry)

  2. Dunkin’ (110, 4th, 6th)

  3. Novartis (108, 7th, 5th)

  4. Lay’s (107, 2nd, 11th)

  5. NFL (105, 8th, 7th)

  6. Uber Eats (101, 15th, 4th)

  7. Budweiser (98, 1st, 21st)

  8. Pepsi Zero Sugar (96, 3rd, 21st)

  9. Amazon (94, 11th, 15th)

  10. Bud Light (93, 9th, 18th)

(Total points, audience rank, industry rank)

From these results, it’s clear there wasn’t a single runaway winner. Budweiser topped the Ad Meter but finished seventh overall after placing a disappointing 21st with critics—perhaps a case of Clydesdale fatigue. Meanwhile, Super Clio winner Anthropic finished 44th with audiences and 24th overall.

The brands that truly won were those that appealed to both mainstream viewers and industry critics. That’s why we feel confident saying Xfinity, Dunkin’, and Novartis were the real victors, each finishing in the top 10 across both metrics.

This year’s top-scoring brands by category were Dunkin’ (Food, $30), Budweiser (Drinks, $35), Amazon (Tech, $30), Xfinity (Rookies, $25), and Novartis (Flex, $15). All were priced at or near the top of their categories, with Novartis the lone exception.

The perfect lineup would have been Lay’s ($15), Pepsi Zero Sugar ($15), Amazon ($30), Xfinity ($25), and Novartis ($15). Those value picks freed up just enough budget to lock in two elite performers, creating a $100 roster with five top-10 brands.

Out of 151,747 possible lineups, Stephens’ championship roster would have finished 22nd overall, good for the 99.98th percentile.

But What About Coinbase?!

Every Super Bowl has surprises, and this year’s biggest was the 60-second karaoke break that doubled as a Coinbase ad. Like the brand’s famous QR-code stunt, it was polarizing. While praised in parts of the press, it finished dead last in the Ad Meter. Had we included it, it likely would have landed somewhere in the middle, not high enough to impact results.

The reason it wasn’t included is simple: we can only make brands available to draft if they announce ahead of time they’re airing an ad. Coinbase didn’t, so there was no way to include it. This happens almost every year.

Additionally, not every brand we made available was rated by the Ad Meter, often because the brand opted out. Those brands included Ai.com, Base44, Genspark AI, Liquid Death, Microsoft, Pokémon, Raisin Bran, Rippling, and WeatherTech.

Pokémon ($25), Liquid Death ($20), and Rippling ($20) were the most impactful omissions for players who invested in them. Raisin Bran ($30) was excluded because it ran regionally; once we learned that, we removed it from the game and notified all affected players, giving them the option to redraft. Our panel still scored it.

We do our best to source the most accurate information possible before the game, but inevitably, Will Shat happens.

Thanks for Playing! See You Next Year.

Thanks to everyone who played, shared the game, and brought it to their Super Bowl party. We’re excited to keep growing Fantasy Brands and welcome your feedback.

Email us at info@playfantasybrands.com.