Colin Kaepernick shaved eyebrow in great EA Sports marketing ploy

Colin Kaepernick “shaved” off one of his eyebrows after losing a bet to Russell Wilson over the Seattle Seahawks-San Francisco 49ers game on Sunday night, but it was all done as part of a brilliant marketing scheme by EA Sports.

Kaepernick and Wilson starred in a commercial over the offseason promoting EA Sports’ NFL video game Madden 25. While they made the commercial, they also recorded a bit where they bet each other an eyebrow on the outcome of the big NFC West game between their teams. The bet got tons of publicity during the week, but Wilson admitted on Softy Mahler’s radio show in Seattle that the bet wasn’t real. That didn’t stop EA Sports from releasing a video following the game of Kaepernick shaving off his eyebrow.

For those unfamiliar with how this sort of thing works, a company like EA will film two versions of the commercial — one with Kaepernick shaving the eyebrow and the other with Wilson doing it. Then they release the appropriate video based on the outcome of the game. You may recall that Reebok did the same thing with its Perfectville commercial after the New England Patriots lost the Super Bowl in 2008. Here’s the alternate commercial.