Mars Snacking's SNICKERS brand will return as the Official Chocolate of the Orange Blossom Classic for a fourth consecutive year, the OBC Committee announced September 2, positioning the confectionery giant's marquee bar for high-visibility game-day exposure in front of a nationally televised HBCU audience at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
The 2026 Orange Blossom Classic — presented by Able Business Services — is scheduled for Sunday, September 6, with South Carolina State University facing Florida A&M University in a 3 p.m. ET kickoff broadcast on ESPN. The game anchors a multi-day OBC Weekend that layers leadership programming, educational initiatives, and cultural activations on top of the on-field product, giving brand partners like Mars multiple consumer touchpoints across the event's full run.
Activation & Brand Fit
For Mars Snacking, the sponsorship is a direct play on stadium-concession adjacency and impulse-purchase behavior that defines large-footprint live events. SNICKERS will deploy on-site activations, interactive fan experiences, and game-day sampling — the same format that the brand has refined over three prior OBC engagements. Gabrielle Wesley, Chief Marketing Officer, Confectionery, Mars Snacking North America, framed the renewal around fan energy and hunger-occasion relevance, noting that the brand is "proud to return to Miami Gardens to help tackle hunger, fuel the fans and support the rich tradition of HBCU excellence."
For foodservice and venue operators, sponsorships of this structure typically translate into category exclusivity arrangements, branded point-of-sale placements inside the stadium's concession footprint, and coordinated sampling that can lift impulse units sold during peak traffic windows — halftime and pregame being the highest-velocity dayparts at college football events.
Event Scale & Economic Context
The OBC has grown into a significant regional economic driver since its 2021 revival. The event has recorded more than $100 million in cumulative economic impact for Miami-Dade County and South Florida across six years, underscoring the scale that makes it attractive to CPG sponsors seeking concentrated reach among a premium, engaged demographic. Attendance draws students, alumni, families, and fans nationally each Labor Day Weekend.
For Mars — a privately held, $65 billion-plus business whose snacking portfolio includes M&M'S, SNICKERS, Pringles, and Cheez-It — HBCU event sponsorships fit a broader strategy of cultural alignment that CPG peers have increasingly pursued as college football's media rights and live-event revenues have expanded. The OBC's ESPN broadcast window extends the brand's reach well beyond the stadium's concession perimeter, compounding impressions at a moment when confectionery brands are competing for share of the growing sports-occasion snacking segment.
Kendra Bulluck, Executive Director of the Orange Blossom Classic, called the SNICKERS partnership "an important part of the Orange Blossom Classic experience," citing the brand's role in building game-day energy across the weekend's programming slate.
For operators and concessionaires working similar large-format HBCU or college football venues, the Mars-OBC model illustrates how multi-year category sponsorships can anchor a consistent experiential activation calendar — reducing negotiation friction each season while deepening brand equity with a recurring fan base. For related coverage of CPG partnerships in the live-event foodservice channel, see our reporting on stadium and venue concession trends and sports sponsorship activations in foodservice.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
