A year ago, Olipop was a rookie in the sports marketing space.

The prebiotic-soda brand’s deal with NWSL team the Kansas City Current went live last April. The Current didn’t have a great season, but the partnership thrived anyway, and at the end of the year, Olipop signed a one-year extension, with the added bonus of pouring rights in the Current’s newly constructed CPKC Stadium.

For a brand going up against traditional soft-drink giants like Coke and Pepsi, which are deeply entrenched in the sports world, the arrangement marked a big win.

“The whole goal of the partnership last year was to test and learn, but we wanted to be grandfathered into the new stadium,” Steven Vigilante, Olipop’s director of growth and talent partnerships, told Marketing Brew. “Now, we are sold in there next to Pepsi, which is super exciting.”

Olipop is building on that momentum and has been active with its dealmaking, adding partnerships from MLS to Nascar to esports, with no intention of slowing down.

Caught in the current: The Current ended the 2023 season toward the bottom of the league, but so far this year, things are looking up. The team, which is playing in the first-ever venue designed specifically for an NWSL team, is near the top of the league, below only the undefeated Orlando Pride, which recently notched a 17th straight win.

Even before the Current was winning on the field, the partnership was scoring big for Olipop.

• Last August, when Vigilante and Olipop co-founder and President David Lester were handing out samples before a game, more than half of the hundreds of people Vigilante spoke to told him they’d heard about Olipop because of the Current partnership, he told us.

“The general excitement and enthusiasm, and the amount of thank-yous we got for supporting their team, was incredible,” he said. “[We] left that being like, ‘Holy smokes. You can feel it. It feels like it’s working.’”

Continue reading here.—AM

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Forget the Lakers versus the Celtics. The NBA has a new rivalry on its hands.

Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery and Turner Broadcasting System sued the NBA, alleging that the league unjustifiably rejected the broadcaster’s bid for media rights and instead chose Amazon.

How did we get here? Earlier this week, the NBA finalized an 11-year media rights deal with Disney, Comcast, and Amazon worth a reported $77 billion that’ll kick in next season. Long-time NBA broadcast partner TNT had matched Amazon’s offer, but was rebuffed, and the NBA alleged in a statement that TNT’s proposal “did not match the terms” offered by Amazon and its Prime streaming platform.

“Throughout these negotiations, our primary objective has been to maximize the reach and accessibility of our games for our fans,” the league said. “Our new arrangement with Amazon supports this goal by complementing the broadcast, cable, and streaming packages that are already part of our new Disney and NBCUniversal arrangements.”

Before the lawsuit was announced, TNT talent had already spoken up against the decision. “Clearly the NBA has wanted to break up with us from the beginning,” Basketball Hall-of-Famer, TNT broadcaster, and all-around-likable-dude Charles Barkley said in a statement. “I’m not sure TNT ever had a chance.”

Now, it looks as though TNT won’t be going down without a fight.

“Given the NBA’s unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer, we have taken legal action to enforce our rights,” the broadcaster said in a statement. “We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to keep watching our industry-leading NBA content with the choice and flexibility we offer them through our widely distributed WBD video-first distribution platforms—including TNT and Max.”

Read more here.—RB

Pour one out for Pepsi.

A few months after Dr Pepper replaced it as the second most-popular soft drink in the US, the soda giant is also lagging behind Dr Pepper in terms of TV ad spend, according to data from MediaRadar.

In the first four months of 2024 alone, Dr Pepper has invested almost all—92%—of its ad spend into TV ads, according to MediaRadar, which analyzed TV ad spend data from January 1, 2022, to April 30, 2024, for Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper, and Pepsi. In comparison, Pepsi spent 72% of its ad spend on TV, while Coca-Cola spent 52%.

Combined, the three brands have spent nearly $400 million on TV ads since January 2023, MediaRadar found.

“There have been notable TV ad campaigns for soda over the years, from Coca-Cola’s polar bears to Pepsi’s star-studded commercials,” Todd Krizelman, MediaRadar’s founder and CEO, wrote in the report. “There is a reason why these brands choose to spend more heavily on TV compared to any other format, because TV provides wide visibility for them.”

Continue reading here.—JS