Philadelphia Eagles Say Street Posters Endorsing Kamala Harris Are ‘Counterfeit Political Ads’

The Philadelphia Eagles declared in a statement that the street posters claiming the team endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris are fake political advertisements.

At least six fake ads were posted around the City before they were taken down last week. It is not clear who was responsible for them.

The posters were spotted in Philadelphia on 16th and Spring Garden Streets, 18th Street and JFK Boulevard, and 34th and Walnut Streets. 

The poster on 16th and Spring Garden streets showed the vice president holding a football while wearing a black Philadelphia Eagles jersey and a signature Eagles green helmet. 

It was captioned “KAMALA” in bold letters above the tagline “Official candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles.” 

The posters included a link to an Eagles voting webpage that shows past Pennsylvania and New Jersey primary election voting deadlines from this spring. 

They also offered links for first-time voters, polling locations and guidelines on voting registration and requesting a ballot. 

The Philadelphia Eagles stated that they did not authorize the posters.

“We are aware counterfeit political ads are being circulated and are working with our advertising partner to have them removed,” the team stated on X.

Matt Cassidy, who works with Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, told CBS News Philadelphia that the City is viewing this as a vandalism incident. 

The City is working closely with Intersection Media, the ad company that owns the bus stop advertising where the ads were found, to have the ads taken down.

“A number of illegally placed posters of Kamala Harris and the Philadelphia Eagles were placed in bus shelters in Philadelphia,” the City said in a statement. “These were not digital ads placed by the Harris campaign, the Philadelphia EAGLES, SEPTA, The City of Philadelphia or the media agency, Intersection, that handles the transit ad space.”

“This was not a digital breach; whoever is responsible for the illegally placed posters broke into the securely covered shelter ad space and somehow put the posters in the space,” they added. “Intersection has advised the City’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) that they plan to conduct a full inventory tomorrow of all bus shelters, and remove any illegally posters. The City has a process to review all bus shelter ads, but this, again, was not a digital ad.”

Intersection Media issued a statement claiming that the ads were not paid for.

“We are aware that several of our bus shelters located in Philadelphia have been vandalized and that the paid advertising copy in each of those shelters has been replaced with an unauthorized copy,” Intersection Media’s President and CEO Scott Goldsmith stated.

The statement noted that even though the ad boxes are locked to avoid vandalism, people often manage to unlock them and place unauthorized material in them.

“We note that the Eagles and Intersection had nothing to do with the creation or posting of this unauthorized copy, and Intersection staff will be removing the ads as soon as possible,” Goldsmith stated.