Why the NFL is painting a giant mural on the end zones of this football field

FastCompany: Jammie Holmes’s Untitled (2024) is a painting that explores the fleeting nature of beauty and success through the depiction of a child emerging from morning glory flowers. As I write this, a giant version of the work, which has been painstakingly hand-painted onto strips of football field turf, is on a plane flying from New York City to Paris. Jammie Holmes, Untitled , 2024 [Image: Courtesy NFL] The turf version of Holmes’s Untitled was commissioned by the NFL for a new initiative called Color Field.

The supersized artwork will be rolled out on the end zones of a flag football field beneath the Eiffel Tower on October 23 and 24 for NFL Experience Paris, a free event that will hype the NFL’s first-ever regular season game played in Paris, on October 25. In December, another iteration of the Color Field concept, featuring a different artist, will roll out on a field at the Art Basel Miami Beach annual show. According to Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s senior VP of global social, creator & content, more giant murals could start popping up on fields throughout the season, depending on the reaction to this initial launch.

This season features the NFL’s most heavily international game lineup ever, with nine games played across Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, London, Madrid, Munich, and Mexico City, the first three of which are entirely new markets. As the league expands its footprint globally, its marketing team is looking for ways to broaden its digital audience reach. With Color Field, the league is tapping into an unexpected crossover between the worlds of football and fine arts. A mock-up of the planned installation. [Image: Courtesy NFL] A giant turf mural lands in Paris “Art” and “football” are two words you don’t usually think of in the same sentence.

But according to Trombetta, the concept for Color Field was sparked when, several years ago, the league noticed a growing legion of dedicated artists in its online fandom. “During the pandemic, we noticed that there were a lot of fans who were creating their own NFL art and they were posting it online,” Trombetta says. “We started to think about ways in which we could celebrate those folks, especially because we weren’t in an environment where we could be with people, and it was such an odd, different time.

We started to take in the best submissions and we would post them online.” Eventually, that insight morphed into Artist Replay, an annual event launched in 2023 that brings artists inspired by the NFL, and their works, into one exhibition space. Artists have included Calvin Clausell Jr. , Kayla Mahaffey, and McFlyy; as well as a player, Marco Wilson , a cornerback who is on the Carolina Panthers’ practice squad, and a former player, Martellus Bennett .

The success of these events, Trombetta says, further revealed how much overlap already existed between the arts community and the NFL—and how much opportunity might exist for bringing new fans into the fold. Color Field is an expansion of that concept on a physically much bigger scale, mixing Jammie Holmes’s real-life work with a real-life football field. [Images: Courtesy NFL] To create the giant mural, a team of one field specialist and six muralists copied the work onto two 15-by-50-foot chunks of turf in a New York City studio.

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The NFL's initiative to integrate art into its branding strategy is significant for the industry, as it showcases a creative approach to engage diverse audiences, making it a relevant case study for brand strategists.