Mars is taking Pringles and Cheez-It to LA28. Why the Olympic deal goes far beyond the stadium

When people think of Olympic sponsors, they picture logos around the track. Mars’s new LA28 deal shows how modern sponsorship really works: most of the value sits outside the venue, in supermarket aisles, on TV and across social media. The Mars LA28 sponsorship is a two-year marketing campaign built around a 17-day event.

What happened

Mars announced Monday that Cheez-It, Pringles, Club, Town House and Combos have been named the Official Salty Snacks Providers and Proud Supporters of the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Team USA. In sponsorship terms, it’s an Official Supporter-level sponsorship, a tier below LA28’s top partners. 

Two brands will lead the campaign: Cheez-It® and Pringles® will captain the team, bringing their bold flavor, signature crunch and playful spirit to fans as excitement builds towards the LA28 Games. 

The price wasn’t revealed. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. 

Why “beyond the stadium” is the real story

It’s a retail deal as much as a sports deal. The partnership covers multiple spectator, athlete, and volunteer touchpoints, driving activation across digital channels, retail point-of-sale environments, and venue footprint opportunities. In practice, that means Olympic-branded packs and displays in stores. Retail trade press is already telling shops to expect Mars teams to pitch LA28-branded secondary placement proposals and cross-promotion tie-ins. 

It comes with a TV and streaming deal. Alongside LA28, Mars announced a separate partnership with NBCUniversal to support the company’s multiplatform coverage of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. That means advertising and sponsorship spanning NBC, Peacock, and digital streaming networks. In our view, this is where most American fans will actually meet the brands: on screens, not in stadiums. 

It’s a long campaign. With the Games in summer 2028, retailers get roughly two years of Olympics-tied promotional runway. The event lasts weeks; the marketing lasts years. 

It covers more than the Games. LA28’s model gives partners more to work with: LA28 is able to offer marketing rights to the Summer Olympics, the Paralympic Games and the United States Olympic and Paralympic teams. Mars can build campaigns around Team USA athletes long before the opening ceremony. 

Why it matters for Mars

It’s a showcase for a new business. Cheez-It and Pringles weren’t always Mars brands. Cheez-It and Pringles were both legacy Kellanova brands that are now being activated under the Mars Snacking umbrella, making this sponsorship one of the first high-visibility deployments of that combined portfolio. The combined business is huge: more than $65 billion in net sales. 

It’s a return to LA. Mars has done this before. It was also a sponsor of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games, for the entire “snack foods” category, with M&Ms and Snickers bars a ubiquitous feature of staff lounges throughout the Games. The 1984 Games are famous for proving that sponsorship could make an Olympics pay. 

Why it matters for LA28

LA28 needs commercial partners at every level. Its biggest deals came first: LA28 has announced top level, Founding Partnerships with Honda, Starbucks and Google, reportedly at or near a $200 million sponsorship investment fee. Supporter-level deals like Mars’s help fill out the programme. 

And the money matters. The Games are being planned in a challenging budget environment for the LA28 organizing committee, for which the City is the final guarantor. In our view, every new sponsor, even at a lower tier, helps reduce the risk that taxpayers end up covering a shortfall. 

The question that matters

In modern sponsorship, is the stadium just the backdrop? For Mars, the real return will come from two years of branded packs on shelves, ads on NBC and Peacock, and Team USA campaigns, with the Games themselves as the finale. That’s the model every Olympic sponsor is now following, and it’s why snack brands want a place at the world’s biggest sporting event.

At The Sports Columnist, we cover the deals, the money and the decisions behind sport. Every game has a second scoreboard, and for Olympic sponsors, it’s kept in the supermarket aisle.

Sources: Mars announcement via PR Newswire, 9 November 2026;

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