As women’s football continues its rapid rise, the UEFA Women’s Champions League has become a focal point for brands looking to invest in long term cultural relevance, not short term visibility.
For PepsiCo, the opportunity was not about sponsoring a single tournament moment. It was about building a scalable platform that could grow alongside the sport through 2030.
Rather than activating through one masterbrand, PepsiCo deployed a deliberate three-brand strategy across Pepsi, Lay’s, and Gatorade, each aligned to a different layer of the women’s football ecosystem. Entertainment, fandom, and participation were treated as distinct but connected pillars.
This breakdown explores how that structure came together and why it offers a blueprint for brands entering women’s sports with serious commercial intent.
- One Sport, Three Brands, One Long-Term Platform
- Marketing Women’s Football Without Framing It as “Emerging”
- Treating Women’s Football as a Cultural Platform, Not a Cause
- Owning the Emotional Moment on Matchday
- Turning Fandom Into a Shared Ritual
- From Visibility to Participation
- Channel and Experience Design
- Why This Campaign Works
- Key Takeaways for Marketers
One Sport, Three Brands, One Long-Term Platform
PepsiCo’s renewed commitment to women’s football is structured around a single sport, but executed through clearly defined brand roles.
The partnership spans multiple UEFA properties, with the UEFA Women’s Champions League at its core, alongside UEFA Women’s EURO 2029 and youth and futsal competitions. The timeline matters here.
Running through 2030, the deal aligns PepsiCo’s brand growth ambitions with the sport’s projected acceleration in viewership, participation, and commercial value.
We’re incredibly excited to announce our new partnership with @UEFA Women’s Football! ⚽ Our new partnership will support women’s football at all levels through summer 2025, and include engaging brand experiences from @LAYS, @pepsi, @Gatorade and more! pic.twitter.com/KprtyGdrXk
— PepsiCo (@PepsiCo) August 26, 2020
Rather than centralizing the activation under one masterbrand, PepsiCo deliberately distributed responsibilities across three of its most recognizable brands. Pepsi leads on entertainment and matchday spectacle. Lay’s focuses on fan culture and shared viewing rituals. Gatorade anchors the partnership in performance, access, and grassroots participation.
This separation allows each brand to show up with a clear purpose, while still reinforcing a unified platform. Instead of competing for attention within the same sponsorship space, the brands collectively cover the full lifecycle of the women’s football experience, from the stadium and the screen to local pitches and community programs.
Marketing Women’s Football Without Framing It as “Emerging”
One of the central challenges facing the partnership was how to market women’s football at scale without positioning it as a developing or secondary product. By 2025, the sport had already moved beyond awareness-building.
Viewership was growing, participation was rising, and fan culture was becoming more defined. Treating the game as something that still needed justification risked undermining its momentum.
For PepsiCo, that meant shifting away from purpose-led messaging alone and toward experiences that assumed demand rather than trying to manufacture it. The activation needed to feel confident, celebratory, and commercially ambitious, while still respecting the distinct identity of women’s football and its audience.
Another layer of complexity came from the fanbase itself. Women’s football audiences skew more female and more digitally native, with different expectations around representation, authenticity, and access.
The partnership had to resonate with long-time supporters while remaining inviting to new fans discovering the competition through marquee events like the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
The challenge, then, was not visibility, but positioning. PepsiCo needed to show up in a way that reinforced women’s football as a premium, global property, without relying on narratives of progress or novelty to carry the story.
Treating Women’s Football as a Cultural Platform, Not a Cause
The strategic shift that underpinned PepsiCo’s approach was simple but consequential. Women’s football was not framed as a cause to support, but as a cultural platform worth building around.
That distinction shaped everything from creative tone to activation design.
Instead of leaning on advocacy narratives, the partnership assumed that interest already existed and focused on amplifying how fans experience the game. Entertainment, matchday rituals, and participation were positioned as natural extensions of football culture, not educational tools meant to justify attention.
This allowed the brands to show up with confidence and scale, mirroring how major men’s competitions are marketed, while still respecting the unique identity of the women’s game.
The timing reinforced this mindset. With structural changes to the UEFA Women’s Champions League format and projections pointing toward sustained audience growth through 2030, PepsiCo aligned its brand timelines with the sport’s commercial trajectory.
The result was a platform designed to compound in value over multiple seasons, rather than peak around a single tournament.
By treating women’s football as a long-term cultural investment, PepsiCo positioned its brands to grow alongside the game, rather than simply borrow its momentum.
Owning the Emotional Moment on Matchday
Within the three-brand structure, Pepsi was tasked with shaping how the biggest moments in women’s football feel. Rather than focusing on product visibility alone, Pepsi centered its activation on pre-match anticipation, a phase of the fan experience that carries high emotional weight but is often underutilized by sponsors.
@tyramills_ I had such an incredible weekend experience with PepsiCo for the UEFA Women's Champions League Final! SUCH UNFORGETTABLE SCENES🤯. Thank you @Pepsi @Lay’s Football @Gatorade @Doritos for the opportunity 🫶🏽🫶🏽 #womensfootball #championsleague #football #pepcity #pepsi #pepsiglobal
The extension of Pepsi’s Kick-Off Show to the UEFA Women’s Champions League final starting from the 2025/26 season marked a shift toward entertainment-led ownership. By combining music, live performance, and fan engagement into a shared ritual before kickoff, Pepsi positioned itself at the emotional peak of matchday, when attention and excitement are highest.
@formzofficial Things are heating up in the Women’s Champions League 🔥 Sponsored by @Pepsi Max UK AD #uwcl #football
That approach scales beyond the final. Pepsi-branded entertainment and fan-powered activations are embedded into every UWCL knockout round from the quarterfinals onward, ensuring consistency across the competition rather than a single headline moment. The strategy mirrors how major global sporting events are packaged, reinforcing the idea that women’s football deserves the same spectacle and production value as any top-tier competition.
That matchday ownership also translates cleanly into social formats because it gives fans something to film that is not gameplay. Crowd interviews, homecoming clips, and pre-match atmosphere content all benefit from a sponsor that is attached to anticipation rather than interruption, especially when fans are already recording for their own channels.
@pepsiuk @Between The Bridges called, said you’re missing the perfect match day experience 👀 ⚽ #pepsimax #UEFAWomensEURO #EURO #fyp #football
Turning Fandom Into a Shared Ritual
If Pepsi focused on spectacle, Lay’s focused on habit. The brand’s role in the partnership was built around reinforcing how fans experience women’s football together, whether in the stadium or at home. Rather than centering its activation on players alone, Lay’s leaned into the collective energy of supporters as a core part of the product story.
Through its long-running “No Lay’s, No Game” platform, the brand framed match viewing as a ritualized moment, positioning its products as a natural companion to football consumption. That idea extended into exclusive digital content and in-stadium experiences designed to spotlight fan reactions, atmospheres, and shared moments that often define how matches are remembered.
Creators also showed how ritual can be built through retail collectibles, not just stadium activations. Seeing players on packaging, finding limited runs in everyday stores, and comparing variants becomes a lightweight fandom behavior that works even when viewers are not attending matches.
@emmalouoldfield Every time I see stuff like this I’m like… looooookkkk 👉🏼🥹 @Hellmann’s Mayonnaise @Pepsi @Pepsi UK #womensfootball #woso #womenssoccer #wsl #euro2025 #leahwilliamson #alessiarusso
Lay’s also anchored its presence in physical space through community-focused initiatives, including the launch of RePlay pitches built from recycled packaging at marquee events like the UEFA Women’s Champions League final. Athlete partnerships, most notably with Alexia Putellas, added credibility without shifting focus away from the broader fan experience.
By treating fandom itself as the hero, Lay’s positioned its brand at the center of football’s social layer, reinforcing the idea that the game is as much about who you watch with as what happens on the pitch.
From Visibility to Participation
While Pepsi and Lay’s focused on how women’s football is experienced, Gatorade concentrated on how it is played. The brand’s role in the partnership was designed to move beyond sideline visibility and into tangible participation, particularly for younger athletes entering the sport.
Through its global Fuel Tomorrow initiative, Gatorade invested in grassroots access by supporting local programs, providing equipment, improving safe playing spaces, and funding coaching development.
These efforts were complemented by on-the-ground activations such as 5v5 grassroots tournaments hosted around major women’s football events, reinforcing the connection between elite competition and community-level play.
Gatorade also focused on confidence and performance, connecting teenage girls with established players and mentors to help address barriers that often limit long-term participation in sport.
There's also the locker room pep talk that the brand sponsored. The reason why this format is a good example is that it delivers motivation and belonging first, then lands the hydration cue as a natural part of the scene.
@womensfootball Time to bounce back 💪 🇳🇱 Shanice van de Sanden, tell them how it’s done! 🗣️ #WePlayStrong #womensfootball #shanicevandesanden @Gatorade @OranjeLeeuwinnen
By grounding its activation in access and development, Gatorade positioned performance support as something that starts well before elite competition. The result was a role that felt functional, credible, and directly tied to the future pipeline of women’s football.
Channel and Experience Design
What ties the three brand roles together is a shared experience architecture built around matchday, then extended outward. Stadium moments act as the emotional anchor, with Pepsi’s Kick-Off Shows setting the tone, Lay’s amplifying fan energy in the stands, and Gatorade reinforcing performance credibility on the sidelines.
Those physical moments are not isolated. They are designed to generate content, conversation, and continuity across digital channels.
In-stadium activations feed social storytelling, while digital content reinforces rituals that fans repeat at home. Grassroots programs and community pitches extend the partnership beyond elite competition, ensuring the brands remain present even when matches are not being played.
This creates a loop where elite football drives inspiration, community access fuels participation, and participation sustains fandom.
Rather than forcing a single message across every channel, PepsiCo allowed each environment to do what it does best. Stadiums deliver emotion, digital platforms sustain engagement, and grassroots initiatives build long-term relevance.
The result is an ecosystem that feels cohesive without being repetitive, and scalable without losing authenticity.
Why This Campaign Works
The strength of this activation lies in its structure. By assigning clear roles to Pepsi, Lay’s, and Gatorade, PepsiCo avoided one of the most common pitfalls in multi-brand sponsorships, internal competition for attention.
Each brand operates in a distinct lane, but all three contribute to a single narrative about the growth and future of women’s football.
The long-term commitment also matters. Extending the partnership through 2030 allows the platform to compound in value as viewership and participation increase. This shifts the focus from short-term exposure to sustained brand association, which is especially important in a sport that is still expanding its global footprint.
Finally, the campaign works because it treats women’s football with the same commercial confidence as top-tier men’s competitions. Entertainment, fandom, and performance are not framed as support mechanisms, but as core elements of the product. That positioning reinforces the sport’s status while allowing the brands to grow alongside it.
Key Takeaways for Marketers
This partnership offers several lessons for brands considering women’s sports as a growth channel.
- Design sponsorships as platforms, not campaigns: Long-term structures allow brands to scale impact as the sport grows, rather than chasing isolated moments.
- Separate brand roles to avoid dilution: Clear ownership of entertainment, fandom, and participation prevents overlap and strengthens overall coherence.
- Treat women’s sports as premium properties: Confident, entertainment-led activations signal belief in demand rather than attempting to justify attention.
- Connect elite moments to grassroots access: Linking top-level competition with community participation builds credibility and future audience pipelines.
- Use physical presence to anchor digital engagement: Stadium and community activations create real-world moments that fuel sustained digital storytelling.
