Sports marketing has long been flooded with beverages. Sports drinks, alcohol brands, and Big Soda are historically dominant in the space, and with prebiotic-soda brands claiming their piece of the pie, it’s only getting more competitive.
Liquid Death is one such brand that’s recently started throwing its hat—or should we say can—in the ring.
The canned-beverage brand became a Nascar sponsor last spring, kicking off a string of sports partnerships that today include pro football, baseball, and soccer teams. This year, there was a Super Bowl ad, and last month, the brand inked a wide-ranging deal with the Madison Square Garden family of entertainment venue companies, landing Liquid Death iced teas and sparkling waters at MSG, Radio City Music Hall, and the Beacon Theater in New York, as well as at Sphere in Las Vegas.
It’s all aimed at helping Liquid Death build its reputation beyond water, Ryan Heuser, SVP of experiential marketing, said.
“Sports was the next frontier for us,” Heuser told Marketing Brew. “Gen Z and…millennials at a younger level are not consuming alcohol at events, or in general, as [much as] they had traditionally, and so we know that there’s a place for us…within the stadiums and arenas.”
Start your engines
With Live Nation as an investor and partner, Liquid Death has roots in the music and entertainment space, but it wasn’t until 2024 that the brand officially expanded to sports. When Liquid Death was preparing to release its iced-tea product, the team realized that the beverage “overindexed with Nascar fans,” Heuser said.
“Nascar fans are second to none when it comes to being passionate about their sport, but also being passionate about supporting the brands that support their favorite teams, and Nascar in general,” he said. “We saw a ton of success at tracks.”
Partnering with Nascar provided Liquid Death with more than just a place to sell its drinks. There have been fan engagement opportunities, including sampling at races, Heuser said, as well as the use of Nascar IP for other activations, like Liquid Death’s “Pro Drivers” campaign, in which it selected three people to join the “Liquid Death Pro Drivers” team, sponsoring them—as opposed to actual pros—with branded car wraps, $30,000 contracts, a year’s supply of iced tea, and customized merch.
Spread your wings
In terms of traditional sports TV advertising, Liquid Death jumped into the deep end this year, running its first national Super Bowl ad after an experiential stunt last year and a regional ad in 2022. Heuser declined to share specific figures, but he said the 2025 Super Bowl campaign resulted in a sales lift. The brand’s football efforts are continuing: Less than a month after the game, Liquid Death signed a multiyear deal to become the official iced-tea partner of Super Bowl champs the Philadelphia Eagles.
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Heuser said he’s regularly in talks with teams across leagues, and the Eagles stood out for reasons beyond their championship rings (and retired center Jason Kelce’s podcast). Part of the reasoning was local pride: Liquid Death’s founder, Mike Cessario, is from outside of Philly, for one, and the area continues to be a “priority market” for the company, Heuser said. Beyond that, anyone who knows an Eagles supporter knows they’re often “passionate fans from the day they’re born until the day they die,” he said.
After seeing success with Live Nation and Nascar events and locking in the Eagles sponsorship, Heuser and his team went even bigger on in-person sports and entertainment experiences by partnering with the Madison Square Garden portfolio. It was an opportunity that he said represents an exciting and changing business landscape.
“Traditionally, some of the bigger brands have locked up [non-alcoholic beverage sponsorships] across the board for years and years,” Heuser said. “But we’re starting to see great opportunities…for other brands to come in.”
Just for kicks
Since Liquid Death is working with some of the biggest teams and venues in the country, it may come as a surprise that the brand typically doesn’t do individual athlete deals, according to Heuser. For now, he said, there’s just no need. “We’ve been really lucky where we have a lot of interesting celebrities or athletes who are just either fans of the brands or friends of the brand,” he said.
Tony Hawk, for instance, is an investor in the company, and as part of that relationship, he worked with Liquid Death to release a limited number of skateboards painted with his blood. They sold out almost immediately, Heuser told us. (Liquid Death has, however, partnered with the wife of a retired pro athlete, Kylie Kelce.)
Now, Heuser has his eye on the ball—the soccer ball, that is. Liquid Death is the jersey sponsor of USL Super League team Brooklyn FC, a partnership that Heuser said allowed the brand to work with a women’s team for the first time while simultaneously letting it “put a toe in the water” with soccer. Now that he’s had a taste of the sport, he’s eager for more, especially considering Liquid Death is looking to grow among Latino men.
“We know that Latino men index very high as soccer fans, and so I would be lying if I said I didn’t have one eye looking into the world of soccer,” Heuser said. “It’s not to say that we are going to make any moves, that we’ve had any conversations yet, but it’s definitely something that’s on [our] radar.”