The Vast Reach of Dr. Pepper’s College Football Investment
January 28, 2025
“The Press Box” podcast, part of the The Ringer network, hoists a big tent around anything and everything associated with media. Oftentimes presidential politics will be front and center. Or analysis of athletes-turned-broadcasters like Charles Barkley and Tom Brady.
On the January 24 episode, hosts Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker engaged in a discussion about…Dr. Pepper, before moving onto more conventional topics like Donald Trump’s first week back in The White House and new NBA announcing hires.
Classify it as an intangible return on investment for one of the more notable sponsorships in big-time sports.
As per this Wall Street Journal story from last year, Dr. Pepper is now tied with Pepsi as the number two soft-drink brand in the United States, behind only Coke. In the piece, Keurig Dr. Pepper chief marketing officer Andrew Springate mentioned the company’s “large investments in college football, including its Fansville advertising campaign.”
If you’re a college football fan or follower, it’s hard to envision a scenario in which you don’t encounter Dr. Pepper in some form or fashion. The Fansville commercials are ubiquitous throughout the sport’s regular season, and the brand is recognized as the “first official sponsor” of the College Football Playoffs. When Ohio State outlasted Notre Dame for the title, it received “the CFP National Championship Trophy presented by Dr. Pepper.” The soft drink also sponsors the Big 12 championship game, and it runs an annual “Tuition Giveaway” for students that gets announced during the conference championship games.
Dr. Pepper made “The Press Box,” generating roughly the same amount of air time as the passing of cartoonist-author Jules Feiffer for an audience believed to number in the hundreds of thousands monthly, because Curtis attended the championship game in Atlanta on behalf of The Ringer, producing a behind-the-scenes piece about the journalists who cover the sport. Curtis noted that Dr. Pepper’s sponsorship of the big game extended into the Mercedes-Benz Stadium press box. Only select soft drinks were offered to the media on site, Curtis said, with Dr. Pepper and its Diet equivalent front and center.
That prompted Shoemaker, who like Dr. Pepper (and Curtis) hails from Texas, to profess love for the beverage – “Big shout to Dr. Pepper” – while Curtis expressed more mixed feelings. For the purposes of the podcast, the dialogue served as an entertaining amuse-bouche before the hosts advanced to weightier matters.
For the purposes of Dr. Pepper? It showed that you never know where your sponsorship dollars, if allocated wisely, will take you.
