What Happened to the Highly Anticipated Super Bowl DOGE Commercials? Crickets

Super Bowl LIX hit the ground running on Feb. 9, 2025. It was an epic showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. Although it was expected to be a competitive game, the Eagles stomped their way to the top with a whopping 40-22 victory over their Missouri rivals.

It was an impressive game in and of itself. But it's probably time that we admit to ourselves that the Super Bowl has become as much about the half-time show and the commercials as the game itself and this reality played out on Feb. 9th in its full glory.

Brands go all-out for their slice of fame during the championship game, and for good reason; the audience potential, and therefore customer potential, is enormous.

There were rumblings ahead of this Super Bowl that Elon Musk would be taking the opportunity to run commercials in favor of his new government project, DOGE. But what happened to those promised commercials? Here's what we know.

Ahead of Super Bowl LIX, people were already starting to chatter about what brands would be running commercials. The commercials are almost a game within the game, with each company competing to see who can create the most memorable ad and pitch their product.

One subject that received a fair bit of chatter was news that Elon was supposedly going to be running five commercials on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and spilling some big government secrets.

DOGE is a project he's working on with President Donald Trump using his tech know-how and team of young hackers to tap into government agencies and do away with what he calls government waste or wasteful spending.

Dana Robinson of the social media handle @conservativeoma reported ahead of the big game in a since-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), “Elon Musk is running Super Bowl ads. Reports indicate he’s spending $40 million of his own money on five 30-second commercials that expose government waste, as found by the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.)."

Dana added, "These ads are scheduled to air during the Super Bowl on February 12, 2025" (excerpt via Pro Football & Sports Network).

There are, at a glance, a few problems with the post, which ended up being removed. The game, of course, aired Feb. 9, 2025, not Feb. 12th. And the commercials never materialized.

Why? It's anyone's guess. Elon hasn't addressed it, and it's unclear what a commercial promoting DOGE might have looked like to begin with.

So if we assume that rumors Elon had purchased a DOGE commercial were untrue, what was the world's richest man doing during the Super Bowl?

It's another question we don't have an answer for, unfortunately.

Elon has been a staple in previous Super Bowls and delights in making predictions. But for Super Bowl LIX, he was nowhere to be seen.

Some rumors online speculated that he was asked not to attend by Trump, who may feel as though Elon's headline-making actions are starting to steal his thunder. However, Trump called Elon "terrific" in an interview over the weekend, promising he would be working with the tech titan on reviewing the Department of Education and Pentagon soon.

Elon's presence wasn't entirely absent from the game, even if he himself was nowhere to be found. His company, Starlink, appeared in a commercial alongside communications giant T-Mobile.

T-Mobile has teamed up with Starlink to offer customers what they promise will be stable internet in "dead spots" around the country where fast and reliable internet is hard to come by.

It was a 60-second commercial, which means big, big dollar signs, clearly signaling the two companies' plans to make a big splash in the tech world together.

But why Elon ultimately decided not to run the rumored DOGE commercials and where he was during the game was much less clear, raising new questions of their own.