By Katie Deighton
Coca-Cola Co. Sprite brand has reclaimed a key battleground in the Soda Wars: sponsorship of the National Basketball Association.
The lemon-lime soda giant on Tuesday was named the official soft drink of the league, taking over from PepsiCo's rival citrus brand Starry.
The news marks a return to the court for Coke, which held the NBA 's beverage marketing rights from 1986 through 2015, primarily to the benefit of Sprite. When the company and the NBA announced one deal renewal in 1998, they even billed it as an unofficial 100-year arrangement. "We don't see any reason why we shouldn't be in business forever," the NBA's chief marketing officer said then.
The contract's actual term was shorter, however, opening the door for PepsiCo to strike a sponsorship deal for Mountain Dew as well as sibling brands such as Doritos, Aquafina and Ruffles. Coca-Cola at the time said it had decided to step away to "focus on the most effective and efficient investments to maximize brand growth," the marketing industry publication Ad Age reported.
In 2023, PepsiCo swapped the soda at the center of the pact with Starry, its new replacement for the discontinued Sierra Mist. The brand was introduced as part of a wider push to jump-start the company's lagging soda sales, focusing its marketing efforts on acquiring Gen Z consumers.
The competition among lemon-lime drinks has been stable lately. The Sprite brands' share of the U.S. carbonated soda market was 8.9% in the most recent 52-week data from Beverage Digest, compared with 1.2% for Keurig Dr Pepper's 7UP and 0.2% for Starry, all unchanged from a year earlier.
Sprite's new, multiyear partnership begins immediately, with the soda set to appear at some moments this season before kicking off the partnership in full for the 2026-27 season.
AT&T remains the title sponsor of the NBA's Slam Dunk Contest, which Sprite sponsored for much of the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s.
PepsiCo meanwhile will still work with the league via brands including Ruffles, which continues as the NBA's official chip, and Gatorade, its official sports drink and longest-tenured sponsor.
Sprite marketing has continued to riff off basketball during its time away from league sponsorship. The brand, which in 2024 brought back its "Obey Your Thirst" campaign 30 years after its first iteration, is a corporate partner of 17 NBA teams, and last year became a sponsor of the women's 3-on-3 basketball league Unrivaled.
"Sprite has always been connected to music -- hip-hop specifically -- street culture and basketball," said Manuel Arroyo, Coca-Cola's chief marketing and customer commercial officer. "In our original partnership, the NBA really helped us to show up authentically in the culture that surrounds the game, and getting to a new partnership with the NBA is going to take us to the next level."
Coca-Cola expects the new partnership to resonate more widely across Sprite's global portfolio than before. The league this season featured nearly six times more international players than it did in its 1991-92 season, and fandom and viewership has spread far outside of North America. More than 75% of the NBA's social media followers are from outside of the U.S., according to the league.
"The levels of audience that we see coming into the NBA and basketball overall are increasing over time," Arroyo said. "But not only that, the attitude that basketball brings to the brand is a critical component in the choice of the partnership."
Write to Katie Deighton at katie.deighton@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 17, 2026 09:00 ET (13:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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