Super Bowl

While the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs will be facing off in Sunday’s Super Bowl LIV, the Seattle Seahawks take the prize for top net favorability rating among NFL fans, according to a new study from Morning Consult.

The Chiefs come in a close second, however, racking up a +31 net favorability rating to Seattle’s +33. The 49ers take the number eight spot in the net favorability contest, racking up a positive score of +23.

The Green Bay Packers (+30), Houston Texans (+29) and New Orleans Saints (+28) round out the top five in net favorability. Sitting at the bottom of the list are the New England Patriots (-2), the only team to register a negative net favorability score.

The overall rep of the NFL seems to be on the upswing. While the league fell from a +45 net favorability rating to +20 in the wake of the anthem-kneeling controversy, that number now sits at +36. The recovery is most pronounced among Republican fans, who gave the league a pre-controversy rating of +53, diving to a minuscule +2 afterward. That number is now back up to +32.

When it comes to the favorite brands of NFL fans, Budweiser registers as the top beer, with an overall +61 rating. Bud is also the favored brew of both Chiefs and 49ers fans, and is the top choice for fans of 18 of the NFL’s 32 teams (that includes Bud Light, the beer of choice for Dallas Cowboys fans). Corona is favored by fans of nine teams, and Heineken is the pick in the remaining five stadiums.

The top snack brand for fans of 16 NFL teams is Doritos, followed by Lay’s (six), Tostitos (four), Ruffles and Pringles (three each).

The Morning Consult study also highlighted several brands that scored higher with NFL fans than with all adults. Heineken, MGM Grand, Samuel Adams Beer and Columbia Sportswear all had net favorability ratings that were 17 points higher with NFL fans than with the general public.

One thing fans don’t want to see during the big game: political ads. In a Morning Consult/CMO Today poll, 63 percent of respondents said the Super Bowl was an inappropriate platform for political ads from candidates.