A view of the Vince Lombardi Trophy and the helmets of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia ... [+]
Following the conclusion of the AFC and NFC championships, Super Bowl 2025 was set. This year, the Kansas City Chiefs will face the Philadelphia Eagles. While many are celebrating this news, the internet doesn’t appear to have received this memo. Instead? Well, it’s brimming with rage and indignation.
Through an ever-growing array of jokes, posts, and memes, people online are finding creative ways to express their content at Super Bowl LIX and the teams set to compete for the Vince Lombardi trophy.
This is interesting situation to analyze, as it shows how social media can dovetail with sports tribalism to, despite appearances actually bring swathes of people together, creating a communal experience in a uniquely exclusive environment.
First, though, some context.
Who’s Playing In The 2025 Super Bowl? And When Is It Happening?
On Sunday, Jan. 26, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Buffalo Bills 32-29 to win the AFC Conference Championship and punch their ticket to Super Bowl LIX.
Alongside this, the Philadelphia Eagles were victorious over the Washington Commanders (55-22) to top the NFC Conference Championship, booking their passage to the NFL season finale.
Super Bowl 2025 will take place in New Orleans at Caesars Superdome—which will be the 11th time the city has hosted the event—with Kendrick Lamar providing the half time entertainment.
Of course, this article isn’t about sporting achievements or taking a fine-tooth comb to the games leading up to it. Instead, we want to look at how the internet acted after the Chiefs and Eagles were confirmed in 2025’s NFL showcase.
The Online Reaction To Super Bowl LIX
It’s safe to say that many on the internet are both heartbroken and enraged about the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles reaching the 2025 Super Bowl.
One of the most common types of posts involved people making memes about how much they dislike both teams:
Other popular posts include sharing a quote from Christian McCaffrey—a running back for the San Francisco 49ers—in which he wishes both teams end up losing:
This theme is continued with other memes that reference popular culture figures, such as Bane from The Dark Knight Rises:
Different people on social media chose to reflect upon the current state of mainstream sports and entertainment, drawing parallels between the 2025 Super Bowl and the Oscars, specifically the heavily nominated (and much derided) Emilia Pérez:
There are many other posts in this vein, expressing unhappiness at a Chiefs vs Eagles Super Bowl.
So, what’s going on?
Why Is Social Media Reacting This Way To Super Bowl 2025?
Of course, there are some straightforward explanations. Firstly, the Kansas City Chiefs have been an incredibly successful in recent years. The team have reached five Super Bowls since 2020, winning the Vince Lombardi trophy three times in those appearances.
While the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2017—beating Tom Brady’s New England Patriots—they actually faced the Chiefs (and lost) in 2022.
This creates a sense of sameness, frustrating many fans. Humans are psychologically geared towards novelty, meaning they like to have new experiences, and, to many, this repeat of the same old teams is disappointing, causing some of this negative online reaction.
Beyond this, there’s an interesting angle in social media helping engage fans in something like the Super Bowl, even though their team is out of the competition.
One of the big factors in sport is tribalism. Research shows that people who directly follow a team will be loyal to them, meaning they won’t support another.
In other words, once whoever you follow is out, your engagement in the game drops.
What social media enables is another way to get involved. Fans of other teams can’t really support a Kansas City Chiefs or Philadelphia Eagles, but what they can do is come together and create a new team: one that hates on those two.
By creating memes and posting on social media, NFL fans whose teams aren’t represented in the Super Bowl can feel part of it by forming a collective that dislikes the other participants.
In other parts of society this could be a negative, but playful banter is a part of sports culture and, as nothing life threatening is happening, games like football can be an amusing sparring ground and repository for passion.
Sure, if people who are fans of the Kansas City Chiefs or Philadelphia Eagles might not like the vitriolic online reaction, but their teams are in the Super Bowl. They can enjoy that. For everyone else, they can find some satisfaction and entertainment by being angry on social media instead.
