The Golden State Warriors have signed Pepsi as a Chase Center founding partner in a deal that along with pouring rights includes a branded club within the $1 billion arena set to open in 2019.
The deal also gives Pepsi rights to use Warriors marks at retail and likely will feature self-service beverage and snack units within the concourse of the new arena. Other assets include branding on the team’s mobile, TV and digital platforms.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the team’s founding partnerships typically are for 10 years and valued at a minimum of $1 million annually. Pepsi also will renew its existing rights at Oracle Arena until the new arena opens in San Francisco.
The centerpiece of the founding deal is a 10,600-square-foot Pepsi-branded club to be built at the north end of Chase Center’s lower bowl. The still-to-be-named space will include about 1,000 seats.
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The Pepsi-branded club will be in the arena’s lower bowl and seat 1,000 people.
Courtesy of: GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS |
“We are taking a traditional category like soft drinks and thinking about how we can create innovative platforms,” said Warriors Chief Marketing Officer Chip Bowers. “We want to figure out how to activate not just in the venue but in the market. We have a couple of other concepts on the concourse such as hydration stations and build-outs for different product launches.”
Pepsi has not yet identified the lead brand of the new partnership. The company has a leaguewide deal with the NBA, with Mountain Dew serving as the lead brand of that sponsorship. Pepsi has 11 NBA team deals and is a founding partner of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara and MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The company has naming rights for the Pepsi Center in Denver and is a founding partner for the Dallas Cowboys’ new training center.
“We look at marquee brands in sports and this is a great example of one,” said Justin Toman, senior director of sports marketing for PepsiCo. “It’s good to be a partner as they build in downtown San Francisco. There are a lot of unique things about it. The biggest one is that these guys have been innovative. That is one of the primary reasons we are renewing for such a long term.”
Genesco is the agency of record for Pepsi. CAA Sports represented the Warriors.
Pepsi joins Accenture and United Airlines as Chase Center founding partners, which are among the team’s most lucrative deals behind their naming-rights agreement with Chase and the team’s jersey patch partner in Rakuten.
More Chase Center founding deals are likely to include a technology brand and a telecommunications company, but the team has not set a limit on how many they will look to sign.
“We haven’t put a number on it,” Bowers said. “We won’t do so many that it feels crowded.”
