During last year’s Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) media day, commissioner Charles McClelland and then-PepsiCo North America president of multicultural business development Derek Lewis had a talk about the future.

Two years before, PepsiCo had signed on as the SWAC’s main beverage sponsor. The company committed to hiring a SWAC student athlete from each conference university after they’d graduated. It dedicated 60 cents out of every dollar of its sponsorship to educational opportunities for SWAC athletes.

It brought water to Jackson, Mississippi, when the city’s largest water treatment facility failed and SWAC member Jackson State University and its surrounding community were left dry.

“When PepsiCo came in, they did some things that, quite frankly, had not been done before in the Southwestern Athletic Conference,” McClelland said. “PepsiCo has really put their priorities directly into the Southwestern Athletic Conference, and it’s not just lip service. … They are literally changing and transforming the lives of our student athletes.”

McClelland and Lewis talked about what an expanded partnership between PepsiCo and the SWAC might look like, and this year—again, at the SWAC’s media day—it was unveiled. The new deal makes PepsiCo the primary carbonated soft drink, non-carbonated soft drink, sports performance drink and ready-to-eat snack sponsor of the 12-school conference. PepsiCo is adding Pepsi Zero Sugar, Gatorade, Starry, Rockstar and Mountain Dew, as well as bringing Doritos, Tostitos and Ruffles into the SMAC mix.

“First, we had a three-year deal; it is now a six-year deal,” said Kent Montgomery, svp of industry relations and multicultural development for PepsiCo, who stepped in when Lewis retired last year. “Second, we’ve more than doubled the investment that we put forward in that deal … [which is] now, in totality for us, the largest investment that we’ve made with the SWAC to date.”

Brand benefits

McClelland said he felt the first SWAC/PepsiCo deal “originally legitimized the Southwestern Athletic Conference in this corporate space.”

“It gave us a partner that said, ‘You are as important to us as our other conferences,’” he said. “So when we were able to go to the supermarket and see a giveaway at one of the major chains and it had Southwestern Athletic Conference on it, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s not just dollars—dollars are important—but it was the legitimacy that PepsiCo brought to the Southwestern Athletic Conference.”

The new deal takes it a step further. Pepsi Zero Sugar, Gatorade, Doritos and Tostitos branding will now show up at SWAC events throughout the football season. Starry, Gatorade and Ruffles will cover basketball, with Gatorade also pitching in with Olympic sports. Rockstar and Mountain Dew will sponsor SWAC esports programs. 

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