The Farmer's Dog on Sept. 9, 2026, announced a multi-year partnership with the NFL, making the brand the league's first-ever Official Pet Food Partner. The launch campaign centers on Cam Skattebo and his senior rescue dog, Duke, and folds in his Dachshund puppies, Cheech and Daizy.
The deal gives the pet food company a place inside some of the NFL's biggest touchpoints, including Super Bowl LXI, the NFL Combine and the NFL Draft, along with community programs tied to My Cause My Cleats, NFL Salute to Service and NFL FLAG. In a league that has long sold everything from beer to pickup trucks, pet food is a new category, and the timing matters because the partnership is rolling out ahead of the season, when fan attention is widest and sponsorship messages travel furthest.
Tracie Rodburg said the NFL is built around shared experiences and community, adding that dogs are part of many families and that the partnership should help the league celebrate their role in daily life. Jonathan Regev took a sharper line, saying The Farmer's Dog was founded because feeding a dog often meant choosing among versions of ultra-processed food, and that this deal gives the company a chance to show millions more people there is a better way.
That message sits at the center of the brand's pitch, even as the NFL becomes a broad marketing stage for the same product it is urging dog owners to reconsider. The company already has a sports footprint through its work with the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and it is coming off an Emmy-nominated, Ad Meter-winning Super Bowl commercial, Forever. The new agreement extends that push from a team-level sponsorship to a league-wide one, which is a bigger megaphone and a bigger test of whether the anti-ultra-processed-food message can survive the scale of a major commercial partnership.
Skattebo said Duke has been with him through every high and every low, long before football became his career, and that he started feeding him The Farmer's Dog because he wanted as many healthy years with him as possible. He added that if the NFL tie-up gets even one more person thinking differently about what they feed their dog, that would be something he is proud to back. The unanswered piece is the one the company did not disclose: how long this multi-year deal runs and what it cost. For now, the story is clear enough — the NFL has opened a new sponsorship category, and The Farmer's Dog is using a familiar player, and a very familiar dog, to sell it.
