Bald eagles and beer once again proved to be a winning combination with American sports fans, and the results were not particularly subtle. Budweiser’s Super Bowl commercial featuring a bald eagle and a Clydesdale horse didn’t just land well—it dominated.
According to the USA TODAY Ad Meter, the spot finished as the No. 1 fan favorite, topping a crowded field of 54 commercials competing for attention during the biggest broadcast of the year.
The ad, titled “American Icons,” centers on an unlikely friendship between a bald eagle and a Clydesdale, portraying both as they come of age. It’s a familiar formula, but familiarity is precisely the point. Budweiser wasn’t trying to reinvent the Super Bowl ad. It was reminding viewers of what has historically worked: unmistakable American symbolism, restrained storytelling, and emotional payoff without irony or lectures.
Roughly 190,000 people voted in the Ad Meter poll between Feb. 4 and midnight on Feb. 9, ranking each commercial on a one-to-five-star scale. Budweiser’s entry earned a four-star rating, comfortably placing it at the top.
The eagle featured in the commercial, Lincoln, is a 28-year-old bald eagle from the American Eagle Foundation in Kodak, Tennessee, which operates the nation’s largest bald eagle sanctuary. His flyovers alongside the running Clydesdale were not cinematic tricks but trained performances, adding a layer of authenticity that viewers clearly responded to.
The symbolism did the heavy lifting. The bald eagle, the national bird, paired with the Clydesdale, long associated with Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch, delivered a message without spelling it out.
There was no winking, no subversion, and no attempt to smuggle in a cultural sermon. It was aspirational, earnest, and recognizably American, and that simplicity stood out amid a slate of ads trying very hard to be clever.
At the other end of the spectrum, fans were far less charitable. The lowest-rated commercial belonged to Coinbase, whose 60-second spot “Everybody Coinbase” earned just 2.06 stars.
The ad featured a karaoke-style screen set to “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back),” with lyrics scrolling across a blue background before the brand name appeared at the end. The concept may have been minimalist by design, but viewers apparently found it forgettable rather than bold.
