Ferrara is sweet on soccer

Something sweet is coming to the US Soccer Federation.

Ferrara, the parent company of candy brands including Nerds, Laffy Taffy, and Trolli, was named as the official candy sponsor of US Soccer last month as part of a multiyear deal that will carry through next summer’s FIFA World Cup and the 2028 LA Olympics.

The deal marks Ferrara’s first foray into soccer, but CMO Greg Guidotti and his team are no strangers to other major cultural pillars and are applying what they learned from events like two Super Bowl ad campaigns in a row as they develop the brand’s soccer platform, he said.

“When you think about the Super Bowl, it’s a sport that’s in the hearts and minds of consumers at that time frame,” Guidotti told Marketing Brew. “We just take the two O’s out and put a U in. It’s football in the summer…When something is thematically relevant in the market, it helps you drive displays and consumer interest.”

Sweeten the deal

Ferrara isn’t just new to soccer—it’s never struck up a “broad, multiyear sponsorship” with any team or league before, Guidotti said. Its brands have, however, shown up at a range of massive events in the past few years, including Nerds, which advertised during the past two Super Bowls and showed up at this year’s Governors Ball music festival, and Brach’s, which showed up for the first time during the 2023 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

When entering into those partnerships, Guidotti said he was motivated by considering “what’s meaningful to the consumer” during certain timeframes. In the fall, when Ferrara is focused on selling Brach’s candy canes, the Macy’s parade provides a big stage to reach consumers. Over the summer, it’s all about music festivals. And for the foreseeable future—from the upcoming World Cup in North America to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil to LA28—consumers will be increasingly focused on soccer.

“Soccer is really going to be in the hearts and minds of consumers,” Guidotti said. “What I appreciate about US Soccer is it’s going to be so relevant for the next few years.”

Taste test

In the lead-up to the competition, Guidotti and his team are planning to activate using the same general approach they did for the Super Bowl, like rolling out product news, setting up interactive retail displays, partnering with athletes on social content, and doing limited-time product drops, he said. Paid media efforts like out-of-home ads in and around stadiums will ramp up into the summer, he added.

The Ferrara team is also working with US Soccer to figure out additional ways to activate at matches and with players to help grow the profiles of both the sport and the candy brands, Guidotti said.

“This is an emotional category,” he said. “We know that some of the US players will have favorite candies; we’ll have them talk about those candies…It almost writes itself.”

All that being said, “we’re very much in the planning stages of activation” still, including announcing which brands will be involved, Guidotti told us. With the World Cup less than a year out, soccer sponsors are in various phases of their marketing plans, with some having rolled out campaigns in time with the Club World Cup this past summer, and others getting started this fall.

Savor it

While Guidotti and his team plan for next summer’s tournament, he’s simultaneously thinking about the Women’s World Cup in 2027.

“We know how strong women’s soccer is,” he said. “The relevance is inherently there.”

When it comes to next year’s Super Bowl, though, Guidotti said it’s too soon to say if Nerds will make a return. For now, he’s focused on figuring out how to use the US Soccer platform to drive sales and increase market share and household penetration for the products that ultimately get featured alongside the sport.

“If we win on those fronts, we’ll be in good shape, and if we’re not, we’ll figure out how to do it better,” Guidotti said. “We’re committed to this platform, but I think we anticipate that it’ll do well.”

Correction 10/15/2025: This piece has been corrected to remove a reference to a non-Ferrara-owned brand and to clarify the kind of candy that Ferrara focuses on marketing in the fall.