There are some sponsorship deals that arrive at just the right time, fundamentally reshaping how a brand connects with its audience and cementing its cultural footprint for decades. For Sprite, that defining moment arrived in the mid-1990s, setting off a historic run that defined a generation of sports marketing.
Sprite served as the official soft drink of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1994 to 2015. Although the brand had been loosely involved with the league since 1986, this expanded, high-stakes partnership officially launched just as Sprite began carving out a bold, distinct brand identity. Entering the market early in the sports drink boom and navigating yet another skirmish in the historic cola wars, the brand leaned heavily into Gen X irony and irreverence to deliver a refreshingly simple call to action.
Its iconic “obey your thirst” pitch—the digested, no-nonsense message of which was essentially to ignore the noise and remember that a crisp lemon-lime drink is fundamentally refreshing—used knowing, zeitgeisty humor to carve out a massive slice of the cultural counterculture for a flagship brand owned by The Coca-Cola Company.
The youthful, dynamic energy generated by the campaign proved to be a natural match for the NBA, effortlessly cutting through the earnestness and bombast that frequently characterized sports marketing elsewhere during that era. Powered by smart creative execution and a sharp, authentic sense of the basketball universe extending far beyond the grand stage of the big league, Sprite left a lasting, indelible impression on fans and marketers alike.
Even after stepping away from its league-wide title, Sprite never truly left the court. As of last season, the brand still maintained individual endorsement deals with 17 separate NBA teams. However, following an 11-year absence from the overarching league partnership, The Coca-Cola Company confirmed a multi-season global partnership in March to restore Sprite to its former league-wide category, stepping in to replace PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew and Starry brands.
“I’m super proud and excited that Sprite is back,” says Mickael Vinet, vice president of global sports, music, entertainment partnerships, and marketing for Coca-Cola. “And not only would I say it’s back in basketball globally, but I truly believe it is here to stay.”
For Vinet, this high-profile reunion carries deeply personal meaning. The French executive has spent 26 years climbing the ranks at Coca-Cola, having originally started as an intern within the company’s sports and entertainment team in his homeland. Sprite’s iconic NBA marketing work was prominent throughout his early career, making its eventual comeback one of the very first major partnership opportunities to cross his desk after he assumed his current global role in 2025.
This major revival, he notes, has generated an immense wave of excitement across the organization at the prospect of connecting fans across sport, music, fashion, and the broader lifestyle culture surrounding the game.
Yet, this new partnership is dropping into a vastly different brand and media environment than the one Sprite left behind in 2015. The modern “Never Stop Refreshing The Game” concept, launched just before the tip-off of the 2026/27 season, must operate in a fragmented ecosystem where the brand no longer commands a singular, uniform claim and advertisement under its absolute control.
In restoring Sprite’s connection with the NBA today, Vinet and his marketing team must bring the overarching campaign to life seamlessly across multiple digital platforms spanning 25 fast-moving international markets simultaneously.
Back on Court
The renewed NBA sponsorship restates a very specific, strategic role for Sprite within the broader suite of products offered by Coca-Cola.
“On Brand Coke,” Vinet explains, “we are very connected with the Olympic movement, with football. And I think Sprite and basketball should be what Coke is around football. I think that’s a simple way to visualise the ambition.”
Vinet firmly believes that Sprite retains a natural, organic fit with the core values and contemporary culture of the modern basketball audience. However, the successful execution of this fresh campaign will depend entirely on uncovering the right consumer insights to build a deeply productive, authentic commercial relationship.
Beyond its existing associations with individual franchises, Sprite’s presence within the NBA has already been revitalized through a prominent endorsement deal with Minnesota Timberwolves star guard Anthony Edwards. In 2024, Edwards fronted the modern restoration of the legendary “Obey Your Thirst” tagline.
One early commercial appearance features Edwards completing a breathtaking dunk in front of an awed fan, who then watches the serial All-Star casually take a refreshing swig from a bottle of Sprite. The fan eagerly enjoys the same drink, but his subsequent attempt to complete a dunk of his own ends in comical disaster. The advertisement serves as a winking, modern retread of a mid-1990s classic featuring Grant Hill, which similarly made remarkably low, humorous promises about the magical athletic powers of the central product.
Hill himself returns to contribute the familiar voiceover for the spot: “You want to hoop like Anthony Edwards? Practice. You want a refreshing drink? Obey your thirst.”
Edwards has since been joined on the modern Sprite roster by Denver Nuggets icon Nikola Jokić. Released in October, the three-time league MVP’s introduction carries a similarly deadpan tone but hits far fewer nostalgic notes. Jokić appears on a dimly lit comedy club stage, casually sipping Sprite and delivering spare, flat stand-up comedy to a mostly quiet, bewildered audience. As the spot concludes, bold text flashes across the screen: “Jokes aside, welcome Joker.”
“I think what is interesting with the two is they have different perspectives, different personalities, different journeys,” Vinet says. “But they both have this unique edge that they will bring to what we do, and what will be very important is not just to have them as ambassadors, but to bring their stories and their views in the way we communicate and engage with fans.”
Jokić’s inclusion also serves as a poignant reminder of how drastically the NBA’s global profile has shifted over the past decade. The Serbian center was just one of 125 international players listed on opening-week rosters for the 2026/27 season. While international recruitment was already a growing feature of the NBA by the time Sprite concluded its first run in 2015, the extraordinary achievements since then of stars like the 31-year-old have firmly confirmed the league’s status as a truly global competition.
To put it another way, Sprite will require a much more internationally focused strategy this time around. Between another annual run of regular-season games staged outside North America—beginning in early November with the marquee NBA Mexico City Game before subsequent stops in Paris and Manchester next January—and the league’s much-publicized long-term ambitions in Europe, the NBA offers a broader, more expansive platform than ever before.
Notably, as part of its wider, structural commitment to the sport, Sprite quickly followed up its NBA deal by becoming an official global partner of Euroleague Basketball. After making its debut at last season’s EuroLeague Final Four in Athens, its prominent branding will appear directly on-court and throughout arenas during the 2026/27 season. Sprite will also pursue multi-channel engagement with European basketball culture, weaving the brand into local music, fashion, and fandom.
Managing that sprawling activity, Vinet notes, presents a wonderful challenge, with the high-profile international games serving as a prime opportunity to build live, immersive experiences into the campaign outside the traditional US market. Content creation, meanwhile, will sit at the core of efforts to bring local intimacy to the wider global collaboration.
Handing It Off
“The role of the brand,” Vinet suggests, “is not just to sponsor and to be visible. It’s to be a catalyst for this creativity and self-expression.”
Sprite’s earlier basketball campaigns were famously steeped in playful pop culture references, ranging from its bold 1990s television output to the mid-2000s emergence of mascot Miles Thirst—a poseable hip-hop action figure and miniature advertising sidekick to a young LeBron James.
To successfully capture the public imagination and hold fleeting attention in the modern era, however, creative messaging must survive and evolve far outside a brand’s direct control.
“That’s what we have learned more and more to do, I think,” Vinet says. “And that’s what we work on more and more from day one. At the moment, we have a core idea with content creators—not just at the end of the funnel, when everything is done and you just ask them to react, but to be part of the content creation itself. The way we create content, the way we organise ourselves, is very different than it was yesterday. And the truth is, we learn every day, there are things we will do that may not work, and that we will have to pivot.”
Landing a marketing campaign of such staggering scale and complexity is never a straightforward proposition. However, this is precisely where Vinet believes the institutional intelligence built up across Coca-Cola’s global network will prove especially valuable.
“We learned a lot during this last Fifa World Cup,” Vinet says, “having a lot of tools and using technology at the service of this real-time understanding of the emotions, the reaction of the fans, and being able then in the way we communicate to be connected in real time. Yes, there is a process in terms of approval that needs to go faster. There is a certain level of risk. But that’s the power of the technology. It allows to be much more personalised in the communication to the fans—much more in a dialogue, and much more real time.”
For any fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brand, a truly successful marketing campaign must ultimately find ways to bring the physical product directly into the daily lives of its target consumers.
Sprite plans to approach NBA fans across multiple avenues. Specially marked promotional cans will feature interactive QR codes capable of unlocking coveted prizes, such as VIP courtside tickets, official Wilson game balls, and exclusive merchandise. Sprite will also integrate itself into gameday food delivery promotions across the US and enter the virtual world of NBA 2K as a proud sponsor of in-game power-ups and digital items.
“There is a lot of content indeed that we can co-create with the athletes that will be leveraged by all our markets,” Vinet adds. “But there is as well a lot of flexibility and opportunity for each of the markets to develop locally relevant content, understanding from their side how fans engage with basketball.”
That targeted regional focus will play a vital role in other upcoming activations as well, with the EuroLeague partnership providing vital, complementary market access across Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.
In South Asia, Vinet points out, streetball holds immense cultural importance, prompting Sprite to execute localized programs designed to restore neighborhood courts. The “Hoops of Refreshment” initiative will also extend to other global territories, providing vital support for community murals and live events that celebrate grassroots basketball culture.
Ensuring consistency across all those diverse platforms and activations will be an exacting, meticulous task, but Vinet views it entirely as an opportunity to lay lasting, durable foundations. He remains deeply proud of Sprite’s storied history and legacy in basketball, yet he is visibly eager to approach its future in the sport in an entirely new way.
“There are already ideas we are working on today, that take more time, that will come for year two,” he concludes. “This is why having this long-term visibility is a chance, because there are things we need to start preparing now for the future. And there are others that we need to test and learn during year one to be able to pivot and go to the next level.”
