STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Phony Plug

Did the Philadelphia Eagles endorse Kamala Harris for president? No, that's not true: The Eagles have denounced "counterfeit political ads" that have appeared around Philadelphia. The company that owns the Philadelphia bus shelters where the ads were displayed confirmed the Eagles were not involved and said they had removed the ads.

The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on September 1, 2024, alongside the caption "Chat is this real?" It showed a caricature of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris wearing a Philadelphia Eagles helmet that appeared in a poster ad at a bus stop. The poster read:

KAMALA
OFFICIAL CANDIDATE OF THE PHILADELPHIA EAGLES

This is what the post on X looked like at the time of writing:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Sep 11 14:09:44 UTC 2024)

The Philadelphia Eagles published a statement on their X account on September 2, 2024, denouncing the posters as fake. They said:

We are aware counterfeit political ads are being circulated and are working with our advertising partner to have them removed.

(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Sep 11 17:35:24 UTC 2024)

The web address shown at the bottom of the poster, philadelphiaeagles.com/vote (archived here), is an official Eagles page that encourages people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware -- states where many Eagles fans live -- to register and vote. It does not include any endorsement of Harris or any other political candidate.

Intersection, the company that owns the Philadelphia bus shelters where the ads were displayed, confirmed that the Eagles had nothing to do with the posters in an e-mail to Lead Stories on September 12, 2024:

We are aware that several of our bus shelters located in Philadelphia have been vandalized, and the paid advertising copy in each of those shelters has been replaced with unauthorized copy. While our bus shelters have locks that typically prevent unauthorized installation by non-Intersection staff, occasionally, people find a way to unlock the ad box and insert unauthorized content.

We consider this act not only vandalism but also theft, as the perpetrators stole both the existing advertising copy and the paid advertising space.

Intersection added that they had removed the posters and would cooperate with law enforcement as necessary.

Lead Stories has reached out to the City of Philadelphia, the Harris campaign, the Philadelphia Eagles and Winston Tseng, the street artist whom several media outlets identified as the posters' creator, and will update this story if they reply.

Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims regarding the Philadelphia Eagles can be found here. Other Lead Stories articles on claims concerning Kamala Harris are here and about the 2024 presidential race are here.