Nick Jonas has been on plenty of road trips — but none quite like this.
The actor and musician plays a prominent role in what is expected to be a significant and long-running campaign for sports-wagering giant DraftKings. In a new ad, Jonas and comedian Kevin Hart appear to take a massive road trip, visiting many different parts of the country. And while Jonas is no stranger to traversing the nation, often on a tour bus, he may not have been accustomed to the way it was done on the commercial’s set.
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“When you’re shooting like that, the vehicle that you’re in is on a practical trailer. It can’t be on. Therefore, the air conditioning can’t be on at all,” Jonas recalls, even though he and Hart felt they were working during “one of the hottest days in New York, New Jersey, of the year.”
“We were both kind of kind of dying in the car, and the windows had to be rolled all the way up for it to look the right way for the camera shot,” Jonas recalls. “But we survived.”
And now, the payoff. Fans of NFL and the NBA are likely to see the commercial in various iterations for weeks. The campaign will continue throughout the football and basketball seasons, and DraftKings will also run additional creative featuring Chad Ochocinco and Carmelo Anthony. In addition to the national advertising, DraftKings expects to make promotional forays into local markets as well.
With sports wagering gaining approval in the bulk of the nation, except for 11 states including California, Texas, Georgia and Minnesota, companies like DraftKings and rivals such as FanDuel and BetMGM continue to move aggressively to court sports fans. Football aficionados are likely to encounter the DraftKings pitch week after week, so Jonas and Hart need to demonstrate winning chemistry.
Sports fans by this time expect to hear a lot from DraftKings during game time. The company spent approximately $69.5 million to advertise during NFL games in 2025, according to data from iSpot, a tracker of ad spending, and approximately $12.8 million to run commercials during NBA games last year. Some of the company’s most likable commercials in the past have relied on celebrities, according to iSpot, including Hart.
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The goal of the ad effort is to help consumers understand that they can interact with DraftKings across the U.S., says Stephane Sherman, DraftKings’ chief marketing officer, during a recent interview. Thanks to the rise of prediction markets, DraftKings now offers services throughout the nation, not just in states that allow sports wagering.
“It is a real change for us from a business standpoint,” she says. The campaign will “invite more fans to be a part of the DraftKings experience.”
Entertainment fans have seen Jonas and Hart work together before, in two of the recent “Jumanji” movies. But the bet (no pun intended) here is that the push-and-pull of Hart, who often comes across with high energy and Jonas, who plays more of a straight man, will get audiences to focus more intently.
“We were trying to boil the ocean a little bit,” acknowledges Chaucer Barnes, chief marketing officer of Translation, the marketing agency that helped devise the commercials. DraftKings wants consumers to understand that the company now offers a broader array of services. “We need you to lean in because we actually have big news to deliver,” he says.
The hope is the actors keep things cool on screen, even if they navigated a little warmth behind the scenes.
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