The Partnership
Mars, Incorporated has secured official salty snack status for five of its brands — Cheez-It, Pringles, Club, Town House and Combos — at the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games and with Team USA, the company announced November 9. The deal adds a separate agreement with NBCUniversal to support the broadcaster's multiplatform coverage of the 2028 Games, giving Mars Snacking layered exposure across venue, retail and media channels simultaneously.
Brand and Operator Implications
For foodservice and hospitality operators building out their Games-adjacent programming, the sponsorship signals that Mars' salty snack portfolio — anchored by Cheez-It and Pringles — will carry official Olympic marks through 2028. That branding latitude matters for concessionaires, stadium operators, and on-premise accounts that want to align their snack sets with sanctioned Games partners. Anton Vincent, President of Mars Snacking North America, framed the sponsorship around shared consumption occasions: "We're proud to bring Cheez-It and Pringles to the LA28 Games, giving fans more ways to celebrate every kind of greatness." The comment points directly at the communal, high-viewership snacking daypart that foodservice operators have long tried to capture — particularly in bar-and-grill and fast-casual formats that index heavily against major sporting events.
The NBCUniversal component adds meaningful media scale. Mark Marshall, Chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal, noted that Mars Snacking's portfolio is "woven into those same moments in homes across America," underscoring the brands' ambient penetration in both retail and away-from-home channels. For distributors and broadline suppliers, the partnership is a leading indicator of promotional activity Mars will push through trade channels in the 18-plus months before the Games open in Los Angeles.
Context and Competitive Landscape
The announcement comes roughly two years after Mars completed its acquisition of Kellanova, the transaction that brought Pringles, Cheez-It, Club and the broader salty snack portfolio under the Mars umbrella and pushed the combined company's net sales above $65 billion. The LA28 deal is one of the first major brand activations to treat that integrated portfolio as a unified commercial unit — a sign that Mars Snacking is moving quickly to extract cross-brand synergies from the Kellanova integration.
Sponsorships of this scale typically carry multi-year exclusivity provisions that lock competing salty snack brands out of the official LA28 ecosystem. For operators negotiating venue pouring and snack rights at Southern California arenas and event spaces expected to host Games activity, the Mars alignment is a relevant data point in those conversations. The salty snack category remains one of the highest-velocity impulse segments in both retail and foodservice, and official Olympic marks have historically driven measurable lift in trial and household penetration during Games windows. The broader snack and convenience-food segment has seen sustained volume growth as operators expand grab-and-go formats — a trend that makes this partnership strategically timed for Mars heading into a high-traffic event cycle. Operators tracking food and beverage supplier partnerships for venue and concession planning should note that Mars' official status now spans athletes, fans, volunteers, and the broader Olympic family across the Games ecosystem.
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.
