Pepsi Makes Gameday Epic With Gladiators, Megan Thee Stallion and the NFL
Pepsi's "Make Your Gameday Epic" is a 2024 short-film campaign launching the NFL season by casting Megan Thee Stallion as Empress Megan alongside four NFL superstars in a Gladiator-themed battle, produced by Ridley Scott Associates in collaboration with Paramount Pictures and directed by Jake Scott.
The campaign launched on September 5, 2024, timed precisely to the opening of the 2024 NFL season, according to pepsico.com. It draws a deliberate line between the present and Pepsi's storied past: nearly twenty years after the brand's original "Roman Empire" platform captivated audiences, Pepsi returns to the arena with renewed purpose. This time, the gladiatorial cast comprises Josh Allen, Derrick Henry, Justin Jefferson, and Travis Kelce — four of the NFL's most recognisable names — reimagined as Gridiron Gladiators facing off in an ice-cold battle with Pepsi at its centre. Megan Thee Stallion commands the action as Empress Megan, uniting the worlds of sport, music, and cinematic spectacle in a single creative framework.
In the United States, the campaign carries a dual mandate: celebrate the arrival of the 2024 NFL season and build anticipation for Paramount Pictures' "Gladiator II," which arrived in theatres on November 22. The partnership between Pepsi and Paramount Brand Studio makes this one of the more structurally ambitious entertainment co-promotions of the year, weaving a blockbuster film release into a live sporting calendar. A consumer incentive reinforced the connection: qualifying purchases of twenty dollars or more in Pepsi products unlocked a ten-dollar Fandango movie reward, as reported by marketingdive.com, directly linking the soft drink aisle to the cinema box office. Clapboard Score: 79/100.
Pepsi holds a long-standing sponsorship of the NFL, making the 2024 season opener a natural activation moment. Rather than execute a standard gameday spot, the brand chose to layer three distinct cultural properties — professional football, a major Hollywood release, and a chart-dominant music artist — into a single campaign architecture. This multi-platform strategy reflects a calculated response to audience fragmentation: a viewer who skips a linear ad may still encounter the campaign through a Megan Thee Stallion music release, a Paramount Pictures trailer moment, or the MTV VMAs, where the track and music-video-inspired spot appeared on September 11, 2024, ahead of Megan's hosting duties, as documented by pepsico.com.
In the United States, the carbonated soft drink category is intensely competitive. Coca-Cola held approximately 19.2% of US carbonated soft drink volume in 2024, according to Market Us, maintaining its position as the category leader. Dr Pepper held approximately 8.3% of US carbonated soft drink volume in the same period, per market.us, making it a meaningful challenger in the space Pepsi occupies. Against that backdrop, Pepsi's decision to anchor its 2024 NFL season messaging in cultural spectacle rather than product comparison is a deliberate act of brand-building over share-of-voice combat.
The revival of the gladiator platform also carries its own strategic intelligence. As reported by marketingdive.com, the 2024 campaign was a deliberate modernisation of the 2004 "Gladiator/Roman Empire" platform, which originally featured Beyoncé, Britney Spears, and Pink performing "We Will Rock You" in a Roman arena. Replacing an all-music-star cast with NFL athletes repositions Pepsi squarely within its current sponsorship identity while preserving the nostalgic equity the original platform built — a creative inheritance that required no explanation to audiences already familiar with the legend.
Jake Scott directed "Make Your Gameday Epic" for RSA Films, the production company founded by his father, director Ridley Scott, whose cinematic legacy is inseparable from the original Gladiator franchise. That lineage is not incidental. Producing the campaign through Ridley Scott Associates — in collaboration with Paramount Brand Studio and Paramount Pictures — means the short film carries a visual grammar inherited directly from the world of the films it references, lending the work a coherence that generic branded content rarely achieves.
The creative execution places Megan Thee Stallion at its apex as Empress Megan, a character constructed to echo the commanding energy of the original 2004 platform while asserting an entirely new identity. Megan recorded a brand-new gameday anthem for the campaign, built on a fresh sample of Queen's "We Will Rock You" — its unmistakable "boom, boom, clap" rhythm recontextualised with cutting new lyrics written by Megan herself. As she noted in a statement documented by pepsico.com: "It was fun putting my creative flip on such an iconic Queen song and I can't wait for the Hotties to hear it." The track was released across all major music streaming platforms simultaneously with the campaign launch, extending the creative work beyond video into audio consumption environments.
According to ispot.tv, audience analysis identified the strong female lead, the music, the costumes, the action sequences, and the celebrity cast as recurring positives among viewers of the thirty-second version of the spot. The production design commitment — full gladiatorial costume, arena staging, and cinematic lighting — gave those elements weight. As noted by shots.net, the campaign's visual ambition was a direct product of the RSA Films production environment, where the scale of the shoot matched the scale of the cultural moment it was built to inhabit.
"Make Your Gameday Epic" earned measurable recognition at a major industry awards body. The campaign won the Webby Awards 2025 People's Voice Award in Advertising, Media and PR, in the Craft category for Best Use of Video or Moving Image, according to Winners Webbyawards. It was also nominated for a Webby Award in the Video and Film category under Branded Entertainment: Short Form Branded, as confirmed by winners.webbyawards.com, placing it among the most formally recognised branded entertainment works of the year.
Audience measurement provides further context. According to ispot.tv, the campaign achieved thirteen percent higher resonance among NFL fans compared to the broader viewing population, a meaningful differential given that NFL fandom represents the campaign's primary target in the United States. The same ispot.tv analysis found that fifty-six percent of general-population viewers expressed positive sentiment toward the thirty-second version of the spot — a solid majority, though ispot.tv also noted the campaign tracked below its category norm overall, with some respondents finding the narrative logic of the gladiator framing unclear.
No verified box-office or sales lift data directly attributable to the campaign is publicly available at time of publication. What the structural evidence does confirm is that the campaign succeeded in creating multiple points of cultural contact across sport, music, film, and live television — each capable of independent audience reach. The Fandango incentive, as reported by marketingdive.com, created a direct transactional bridge between Pepsi purchase behaviour and Paramount Pictures' theatrical release, embedding commercial accountability into what might otherwise read as pure brand spectacle. For a campaign operating across this many simultaneous channels, the Webby People's Voice Award suggests that audience engagement, not just critical recognition, was a genuine outcome.
Pepsi's Make Your Gameday Epic is a 2024 short-film campaign produced by RSA Films and directed by Jake Scott. It launched on September 5, 2024, to mark the start of the 2024 NFL season and promote Paramount Pictures' Gladiator II, starring Megan Thee Stallion as Empress Megan alongside NFL players Josh Allen, Derrick Henry, Justin Jefferson, and Travis Kelce.
Jake Scott directed Make Your Gameday Epic. RSA Films — Ridley Scott Associates — produced the campaign in collaboration with Paramount Brand Studio and Paramount Pictures. Jake Scott's directorial connection to RSA Films, founded by his father Ridley Scott, gave the campaign a direct creative lineage to the Gladiator cinematic universe it references.
The campaign features a brand-new gameday anthem by Megan Thee Stallion built on a fresh sample of Queen's We Will Rock You. Megan wrote new lyrics over the track's signature boom, boom, clap rhythm. The song was released on all major music streaming platforms at the same time the campaign launched in September 2024.
Make Your Gameday Epic won the Webby Awards 2025 People's Voice Award in Advertising, Media and PR for Craft: Best Use of Video or Moving Image, according to winners.webbyawards.com. The campaign was also nominated in the Webby Awards Video and Film category under Branded Entertainment: Short Form Branded, placing it among the year's most recognised branded entertainment works.
The 2024 Make Your Gameday Epic campaign is a deliberate revival of Pepsi's 2004 Roman Empire platform, as reported by marketingdive.com. The original featured Beyoncé, Britney Spears, and Pink performing We Will Rock You in a Roman arena. The 2024 version replaces the music-star cast with Megan Thee Stallion and four NFL players, modernising the platform for Pepsi's current sponsorship identity.
According to ispot.tv, the campaign achieved thirteen percent higher resonance among NFL fans compared to general viewers in the United States. The same analysis found fifty-six percent of general-population viewers expressed positive sentiment toward the thirty-second version. However, ispot.tv also noted the campaign tracked below its overall category norm, with some viewers finding the narrative framing unclear.
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