Executive Q&A: Celsius’ CMO Talks Infusing Energy into the 2025 MLS All-Star Game -

Celsius MLS All-Star Soccer Celebration activation Celsius scored some major wins during the 2025 MLS All-Star Week. Building on its first-time presence last year, the Official Energy Drink of MLS arrived in Austin, TX, ready to hype up soccer fans for the All-Star Game on July 23. Celsius incorporated its new Live. Fit. Go. campaign, the largest marketing initiative in the brand’s history, into its activations at the MLS All-Star Soccer Celebration fan fest and surrounding events to drive awareness and counter the myth that energy drinks are just for athletes or gym lovers.

Ahead of the MLS All-Star Game, we spoke with Kyle Watson, cmo of Celsius, to delve into its soccer activations in Austin and learn more about the brand’s growing MLS partnership, as well as how Celsius is breaking into Formula 1 and music festivals.

Event Marketer: How is Celsius activating during MLS All-Star Week?

Kyle Watson: We’re excited to be part of it. We are leading off with an activation at Soccer Celebration, and it’s a very cool experiential, branded 40-by-40 Celsius footprint (handled by Rooted Creative). Consumers can come try our product—they’ll be receiving full cans—and really engage directly with our brand and our ambassadors over this two-day experience.

Celsius x Orangetheory at MLS All-Star Game

And then we also have a deeper activation that really embraces our fitness positioning and that Live. Fit. Go. campaign with an Orangetheory workout. We’re going to host an exclusive workout the morning of the game, so that’ll be another way to engage the audience even more. From a game perspective, at the MLS All-Star Skills Challenge, we have one of our brand partners, Ben Black, who is a really big ex-soccer player and brand ambassador for us, out there hosting and doing pre-event warm-ups to integrate our product into the energy of the event.

Our brand is very socially led, so we always want to make sure we bring out our brand partners to talk about the event and have that radiation across social media. We want that experience to be shared across different communities and showcase how our brand is tying into this sport.

EM: Since 2023, how has the partnership with MLS grown, and why was this the right sport for the brand to engage with?

KW: We’ve really embraced our partnership with MLS, and it is truly a perfect partnership for us and our Live. Fit. Go. mantra about embracing everything around an active, healthy lifestyle. It’s been such a great opportunity because we were seeing that soccer was a growing sport, especially within the U.S. Soccer was really resonating with a lot of our key audience segments, and it was growing with Gen Z.

It allows us to not only have MLS and the property as a partner, but it’s really having the partnerships with the athletes and players, deepening it in a more robust way. Having that play across 360 degrees so that it’s being showcased throughout all of our pillars is extremely important for us, including on-site events and activations that engage consumers and being part of cultural moments like this All-Star Game.

EM: How is Celsius engaging with other sports leagues and incorporating experiential marketing into its plans for the rest of the year?

KW: We have a ton of sports partnerships. We’re all about making sure we’re meeting people in those emotionally connected moments. We call ourselves Generation C; we’re culture curators.

Over the past two years, we’ve partnered with the Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 team, so we want to make sure, again, that our brand is in the center of something that has become a cultural phenomenon, especially in the U.S. with the [“Formula 1: Drive to Survive”] Netflix series and now even with the “F1” movie that just came out. Formula 1 is kind of hitting more mainstream, but it continues to be something that resonates with such a wide, diverse group of consumers and audiences.

We also have our own Essential Vibes Tour, where we combine our brand and product integration into music festivals across the U.S., including Breakaway Music Festival. But one of the reasons why we’ve really embraced music is because it is something where people are so emotionally connected, and they need energy for it. It’s really hard to go and be active at two- or three-day festivals, so it’s definitely a usage occasion for energy, specifically.

Also, we’ve been able to actually integrate fitness activations into these festivals. For example, at Breakaway, we had a Barry’s pop-up before the festival. When you think about the people who are engaging in music festivals and have that passion for music, they are usually fitness-minded individuals. So that’s been really big for us, using our Essential Vibes Tour to spread our essential energy across all of those experiences and hitting consumers in those emotional moments.

Celsius MLS All-Star Soccer Celebration activation

Photo credits: Rooted Creative; CELSIUS

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