How Much Do Former Coaches Make From Those Coors Light Ads?

You’re an NFL coach and you’ve just gotten fired. Don’t worry. More of your gravy train is coming in the form of Coors Light ads. That’s if you’ve said anything funny at press conferences over the years.

Coors Light
Coors Light

For coaches like Jim Mora, Mike Ditka, Marv Levy, Bill Parcells, Denny Green, Brian Billick and Herm Edwards, it’s a pretty nice check to pick up, considering that they literally don't have to do a thing.

So how much do they make?

“The coaches get a rights fee,” said Tom George, senior vice president of athlete property marketing at Octagon, who negotiated the Coors Light deals for Billick and Edwards.

“So they don’t get paid for each time it runs. It’s basically compensation for use of their image and voice and it’s commensurate with the money a celebrity might make when they are in some way associated with the product without taking any time away to do it,” George said.

George says coaches like to do the spots because it's not an endorsement or a testimonial of the beer, which creates a distance between the usage of the video and the product. Still, George says he has had some Octagon coaches turn it down. He wouldn't reveal names.

Coors Light can only show the ads, which have been running for at least four years, because they have been the official beer of the NFL since 2002. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said that Coors pays a licensing fee to NFL Films for the ability to use the footage in its commercials.

Next season, it will lose that privilege as Bud Light will become the beer of the league.

If I can inject my take here, as I do frequently on this space, these commercials were funny for about a year and a half, but I think they’ve entirely lost their novelty and NFL fans just drown them out. Or should I say, the ad have "run their Coors."

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