Bill Maher is an equal opportunity offender on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, and Friday night he ripped Nike’s Super Bowl commercial featuring Caitlin Clark and other women sports stars.
“Did you see the Nike commercial that they ran with all the women athletes,” Maher asked, before the show aired a clip from the black-and-white commercial, which was titled, “So Win.”
For those who missed the commercial during Super Bowl LIX:
There’s one guarantee in sport. You’ll be told you can’t do it. So do it anyway.
You can’t win. So Win.
🎤@officialdoechii pic.twitter.com/Fcu9VXQbnA
— Nike (@Nike) February 10, 2025
“I feel like this is a giant zombie lie,” Maher said, explaining the concept as “something that used to be true, that stopped being true, and then people kept saying it.
“If the Democrats are ever going to win again, they have to realize something about the American people: They’re not that savvy about politics, but they know when you’re lying. When was the last time a woman was told: ‘You can’t do this, you can’t be confident’?’ Who are these imaginary mean old men of the patriarchy?”
One of Maher’s guests, Pamela Paul, a columnist with The New York Times, agreed the commercial missed the mark.
“Most of the messages you hear out there are ‘girl power,’ ‘you go girl,'” Paul said. “The messages encouraging young women are so ubiquitous, it begins to sound not only dishonest but weird and defensive. … Why does it help girls and women to think of themselves as uniquely embattled and vulnerable?”
Bill Maher slams Nike Super Bowl ad for floating ‘zombie lie’ about the ‘patriarchy’ https://t.co/ed9pp9WfNP pic.twitter.com/i4XIwg8sq9
— New York Post (@nypost) February 15, 2025
The commercial, which also featured Olympic sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, gymnast Jordan Chiles and WNBA stars Sabrina Ionescu and A’ja Wilson, was Nike’s first Super Bowl ad since 1998. While Maher wasn’t a fan, the commercial earned strong reviews elsewhere; Awful Announcing’s Michael Grant selected it the best commercial in Super Bowl LIX, saying, “We’ll be talking about this commercial for years.”
