Super Bowl Sunday is filled with ads and partnerships, and it’s can be a career-defining moment. Now, Desus Nice is getting in on the action. For the 2024 Super Bowl season, Nice has teamed up with TUMS® on their collaboration with DraftKings to launch TUMS® Prop Bites, lauded as the first-of-its kind platform where fans bet on their food picks for the game for free and see how they wage against the rest of the nation for a cash prize. swithTUMS® fast heartburn relief, you’ll never have to take a chance with your favorite foods.
It’s a simple yet fun game, with lucky winners receiving upwards of a $10,000 cash prize. TUMS® Prop Bites allows fans to try to pick which foods have won America’s hearts and stomachs for the biggest night in sports. The game is now through February 11th, and interested players must be 18 and older.
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The TUMS partnership comes on the heels of Nice hosting The Daily Show last Fall. he’s known in the social media world and commentary space, so it’s no surprise that he was approached about the guest hosting gig. The former Desus & Mero co-host is gearing up for a year full of surprises, and he is starting it off with the Super Bowl madness. PopCulture spoke with Nice about the TUMS partnership, what a Super Bowl moment means for his career, and what’s up next.
Congrats on your partnership with TUMS Pro Bites. It’s a big deal that it’s around the 2024. Super Bowl. So tell us about how this partnership came to be.
DN: Shouts out to TUMS. They’re super cool people. And working with them has been amazing. They’re on it. And they reached out to me because I’ve been on their radar after The Daily Show hosting gig, they reached out and was like, ‘Hey, we got this cool thing we’re doing.’ And it makes sense. It’s a brand I use. I do get upset stomachs and use TUMS. Growing up, we always had TUMS in my mother’s house. It’s recognizable, the song, and it’s just an iconic brand. So the ability to do something cool around the Big Game and them using their star power and the connection with DraftKings was just incredible.
It’s a cool little game where you can just bet on what snacks are going to be consumed during the course of the actual football game, and you can win up to $10,000 for figuring out how much is going to be eaten, who’s going to eat the most tacos? Especially for people who are following the sport. But even if you are, you can make a little extra money just sitting on the side with DraftKings and TUMS. And what’s really cool about it is they made sure it wasn’t corny. So you go on the website and you see it’s it’s very on the up and up and it’s real fun to play. And then we’re actually going to do an activation in Las Vegas around the big game, and I’ll be out there. So people can come out there and meet me and play the game with me and take pictures, or get t-shirts.
So I mentioned that this whole thing is surrounding the 2024 Super Bowl, which is considered to be the biggest night in sports. How significant is this moment in your career to have a Super Bowl partnership and promo?
This is huge. It’s it’s such a big event, and then also to be working with a brand such as TUMS, again, it’s four letters, but when you say it, people are like, ‘Whoa.’ Because even as I told my parents, they’re like, ‘Whoa. TUMS.’ They were really impressed. I was like, ‘Well, I’ve done a lot of other stuff that didn’t impress you. So we’re going to have to tackle this in therapy.’ But this is a lot of fun. And it’s definitely kind of a benchmark in my career. I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re doing this. This is really big. What’s next? What’s the next big thing we’re going to do?’ So this is super exciting to do. And just being able to go out to Las Vegas to represent it and doing the IG posts and just recording the commercial, it didn’t feel like work. And it’s just been fun from day one. So even right now doing these interviews is fun.
The game is about guessing what food is going to be on the menu for Super Bowl Sunday. Food and football go hand in hand. So what’s typically on the menu for you for Super Bowl Sunday?
Great question. Potato skins, I haven’t seen those in a while. They need to bring those back. Deviled eggs. Wings are always good. I’m not a big shrimp person. I’ve seen shrimp platters. I feel like that’s a good way to maybe get food poisoning if it’s no refrigerated the right way. But I simple things like potato salad, guacamole, and tacos. Just the basic game foods. There’s nothing I can really relly think of anything that’s really esoteric that I wouldn’t want to see at a Super Bowl party. Unless it was like a bowl of liver. I’d pass that up. But other than that, I’m good.
Who are you hoping makes it to the Super Bowl this year?
I’m really rooting for the Ravens. I have a lot of fans who are Ravens fans, and I would like to see them get a win. They’re crazy fans. They’ve been huge fans since day one. And I just want to see all my little friends in their little purple shirts excited.
So are you excited about the Usher being at the halftime show this year? Are you nervous that he’ll serenade whoever’s in your life?
I’m very excited about the Usher thing. I’m also kind of a hater because women are enjoying him a bit too much. I don’t like that. I don’t like seeing women smiling because Usher is gyrating on the stage. I’m kidding. It’s incredible though because Usher has so many songs and you know his classics, and he brings out another one and another. And I just wanna see the whole stadium just singing “Yeah.” That’s going to be such an experience. And also, for the record, the best Usher song, I will go down in history saying the best Usher song is “Daddy’s Home.” And that does not get enough props. And I can’t wait for him to sing it.
Well, hopefully that makes it. You know he only has 15 minutes, so hopefully that makes it on the list.
If I get drunk enough, I’m singing that on my own at a Super Bowl party.
Karaoke is always a yes. So you’ve also mentioned that this partnership kind of came about after your stint on The Daily Show. You had a successful stint doing it. Would you ever consider doing something like that full-time?
Oh, absolutely. I love hosting. I love being on people’s screens. Doing The Daily Show four nights a week was such a fun gig. It did not feel like work interviewing, uh, famous people. And just if you even watch the show, I’m having the time of my life. I’m cracking up in between jokes. I’m laughing with the staff. If it was offered to me, that’s something I definitely would be down the take. But right now, they’re just figuring things out. So we’ll see what happens.
Most fans know you from your show with Mero. What do you feel has been the show’s impact on the culture?
I’m really proud of the show we made, and I feel like the impact it made on the culture was it was just two people riffing on topics, and it was just very lighthearted, very easy to make, and it wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting from it. And I think if you look across the spectrum now, you see other shows have not copied the format expounded on it, and used it to create their own show. So that’s always something I’m very proud of – that people saw it and was like, ‘Oh, there’s something here.’ And it’s very authentic. It’s very down to earth and it’s very much for like real people. It’s not mainstream in the fact that the stuff that we covered on the show was for everybody. Some of the stuff was so specific to certain cities, mostly in New York, that even if you weren’t from New York, you watched it. You got a chance to experience New York. So for all the people who learned about New York through the show, I feel like that’s probably a legacy I’m very proud of.
Now after the Super Bowl promo, you’re going to have to do something that can top it. You’re kicking off the new year in a major way. So what other projects that you have lined up for 2024?
I have a bunch of stuff lined up. But in Hollywood, you can’t really announce stuff until you sign all the signatures. So I can’t really announce anything right now, but know that you will see Desus on your screens several times in the next year. And I have some big announcements coming up soon, but can’t announce them yet. But just please stay tuned and believe me, I got to big stuff.