Eminem and Bizarre Watched the Lions Win an Overtime Thriller, and Ford Field Lost It
The Lions opened the season by beating the Saints 31-30 in overtime, and the loudest moment that didn't involve football was the videoboard finding Eminem in a suite with Bizarre while Lose Yourself played. Hailie says grandson Elliot was in the building too. The clips, the score, and the full history of Em's Lions ritual.
By @bradleymines ·
Week 1, a 31-30 overtime win over the Saints, and the traditional videoboard moment: hood up, backwards Lions cap, hands over his head while sixty thousand people rapped at him.
The Detroit Lions opened their 2026 season on September 13 the hard way, needing overtime to put away the Saints at Ford Field, and Eminem was in the building for all of it. Cameras found him in a suite alongside Bizarre of D12, in a custom blue and white Lions varsity jacket, sunglasses, and a backwards Lions cap over a hood, and when the videoboard cut to him with "Lose Yourself" on the speakers and LOSE YOURSELF scrolling across the ribbon boards, he stood and clapped over his head while the stadium roared.
The Lions' own account posted the clip with the caption ".@Eminem got the @fordfield crowd going," which is about as official as a cameo gets.
The game earned the celebration
This was not a courtesy appearance at a blowout. Tied 24-24 after regulation, the Lions took the first overtime possession into the end zone on a four-yard Jared Goff touchdown to Amon-Ra St. Brown. The Saints answered with a touchdown of their own to Noah Fant, and then head coach Kellen Moore skipped the tie and went for two and the win. The conversion fell incomplete. Final: Lions 31, Saints 30.
Jahmyr Gibbs carried it 29 times for 156 yards and two scores, St. Brown caught ten balls and two touchdowns, and Saints quarterback Tyler Shough threw for 410 yards in the loss. A one-point overtime escape in the home opener is exactly the kind of game you want a suite for.
There was a family dimension too. According to ePro, Hailie Jade shared on an Instagram story that grandson Elliot was at the game with his grandad, with the whole Mathers family reportedly eager to make the opener. Fitting, since Elliot's first birthday celebrations have been a running theme of the season already.
The videoboard moment is a ritual now
If the scene felt familiar, it should. In the January 2024 divisional round against the Buccaneers, the Ford Field jumbotron found Em in a skybox with "Lose Yourself" playing and he jumped up, flexed, and pounded his chest. In January 2025, Sunday Night Football cameras caught the crowd erupting when the board showed him during the Vikings game. The September 2026 version, hands clapping over his head with Bizarre next to him, is the same ceremony with a new date. At this point the Lions game presentation team clearly knows exactly what button they are pressing.
The full history of Em's Lions era is longer than most artists' entire sports resumes. He narrated NBC's Sunday Night Football open for the January 2024 wild card win over the Rams, the franchise's first playoff win since 1991, after publicly begging Matthew Stafford to "let us have this one." He flew to San Francisco for the NFC Championship two weeks later and greeted 49ers fans with two middle fingers. He opened the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit alongside Roger Goodell to "Not Afraid." And last November he walked out during Jack White's Thanksgiving halftime show for a "'Til I Collapse" mashup he co-executive-produced with Paul Rosenberg.
The official Lions upload of the 2024 wild card intro, still the high-water mark of the Em-Lions partnership on film.
Bizarre in the suite is its own little story
The plus-one matters to anyone who has followed the D12 renaissance this year. Bizarre has spent 2026 keeping the group's name active, from the "My Salsa" video to live dates, while Em has been the group's biggest cheerleader from a distance. A Sunday afternoon watching football together, twenty-five-plus years after the eight-track sessions that built Slim Shady in the first place, is the kind of low-stakes sighting that says more about where those relationships stand than any press release.
The Lions are 1-0, the "Lose Yourself" cameo streak is intact, and with the team already booked for another Thanksgiving spotlight this fall, it is a safe bet this was not Em's last Ford Field appearance of the season. The only open question is whether the game presentation crew can keep topping itself. Sixty thousand people rapping the bridge at the man who wrote it is a hard act to follow.