Baltimore-based Pompeian, America's top-selling olive oil brand, has signed a multi-year sponsorship with the Baltimore Ravens, weaving the brand into game-day programming at M&T Bank Stadium and extending it onto retail shelves through a limited-edition co-branded bottle. The deal illustrates how heritage CPG brands are increasingly treating regional sports partnerships as integrated brand-launch vehicles rather than simple logo placements.
The Activation Structure
The partnership gives Pompeian visible touchpoints across the Ravens' 2026–27 season. On-site, the brand will operate sampling stations on RavensWalk at three home games — September 20 versus the Saints, October 25 versus the Bengals, and November 5 versus the Jaguars — where fans can try "PompCorn," a popcorn preparation finished with olive oil, and pick up branded giveaways. Inside the stadium, Pompeian becomes the presenting sponsor of the Ravens' fan-cam segment on the RavensVision big screen, giving the brand a recurring, crowd-driven moment during live broadcasts.
Michael Vercelletto, Vice President of Marketing at Pompeian, framed the partnership around the brand's 116-year Baltimore roots, noting that the "Pomp It Up" campaign — built around olive oil's role in everyday cooking — translates naturally to a tailgate and table narrative. Kevin Rochlitz, Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer for the Ravens, described Pompeian as a community pillar whose tenure in the city predates the franchise by decades.
Retail and Distribution Signal
The most operator-relevant element may be the retail tie-in. Pompeian is rolling out a co-branded extra virgin olive oil bottle — available in Smooth and Robust — at select local stores, with availability beginning September 8. Limited-edition packaging tied to a live sports partnership creates a time-compressed purchase window that can accelerate trial and velocity at the shelf level. For food and beverage brands evaluating regional sponsorship ROI, the ability to convert fan enthusiasm directly into a trackable SKU is increasingly the metric that justifies the spend.
Food and beverage brands across grocery and foodservice have accelerated sports-adjacent campaigns since 2024, as streaming fragmentation has made broad reach harder to buy efficiently. Regional NFL partnerships, which deliver high local television ratings alongside physical stadium presence, offer a concentrated media environment that programmatic digital buys rarely replicate at equivalent emotional intensity. For a Baltimore-centric brand like Pompeian, the geographic alignment also reduces wasted impressions — a common critique of national sponsorship packages applied to regionally distributed SKUs.
What Operators and Brand Managers Should Note
For food operators, suppliers, and brand teams assessing similar moves, this deal offers a replicable framework: anchor a campaign platform (here, "Pomp It Up") to a community institution, deploy sampling and experiential marketing at high-traffic physical venues, and convert that engagement into a retail moment with a differentiated package. The QR-code fan-cam mechanic also creates a first-party data capture opportunity often overlooked in sports sponsorship evaluations.
Brands exploring regional launch strategies and in-person sampling programs should examine how Pompeian structures the balance between stadium visibility and retail pull-through — the two rarely align this cleanly in a single sponsorship agreement.
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.
