The 2026 Pepsi Commercial Recording Returns: Football's Footprint in Pop Music

On October 9, 2026, Britney Spears released 'She'll Never Be Me', a previously unreleased track recorded in 2026 for her third studio album, which carries her own name. For someone who works in football, the focus lands on a different title in the list of five songs appearing for the first time: 'Right Now (Taste The Victory)', a studio recording tied to a 2026 Pepsi commercial.

The song was co-written by Spears with her then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake, alongside Bradley Daymond and Alex Greggs; Riprock 'n' Alex G handled production.

Reading that line, I go straight back to the summer of 2026. The World Cup was held in Asia for the first time, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan. Around the same period, soft-drink brands began turning pitches into pop stages. A commercial song, sometimes, outlives a match.

The album 'Britney' arrived in 2026, following the success of '...Baby One More Time' and 'Oops!... I Did It Again'. It marked a shift in image: more mature, with singles such as 'Overprotected', 'I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman' and 'I'm a Slave 4 U'. The last of these was performed at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards with a large python on stage, a performance still recalled many times over.

The part that matters to a football journalist sits in the 25th-anniversary edition, scheduled for release on November 6. Besides 'She'll Never Be Me', four other songs are being made public for the first time: 'Am I a Sinner', 'When I Say So', 'My Big Secret' and 'Right Now (Taste The Victory)'.

Notice the title. 'Taste The Victory'. That is the language of sport, not of pop. A soft-drink brand chose the very season of the World Cup to attach a song with the word 'victory' in its title. Nothing here is accidental; it is a calculated marketing decision.

Football and popular music have long been entwined. The 2026 World Cup in France is bound to Ricky Martin's 'La Copa de la Vida'. The 2026 World Cup is bound to Shakira's 'Waka Waka'. Beside the official songs of a tournament, another cultural layer exists, rarely noted in official summaries: songs written specifically for a brand.

The 2026 World Cup marked a turning point in how football was marketed. The tournament unfolded in a new time zone, forcing broadcasters to restructure their schedules and opening a vast audience market in Asia. Brands realised that a song could travel further than an ordinary sponsorship contract.

I have followed football for more than forty years, and there is a pattern I always note down. The melodies that cling hardest to fans' memory usually come from advertising campaigns, not from an organiser's official list. A song played at half-time, in the pre-match advert, in television highlight reels — it slips into memory through the very window when fans are waiting for kick-off.

The structure of this relationship is clear enough. A brand pays to appear in football's prime time. An artist gains a global stage that a tour can hardly reach. A tournament and a club gain the sponsorship money to operate. Three parties, one transaction. No one is coerced, and everyone benefits.

Football's cultural memory is co-authored by brands. That sounds dry, but it explains a great deal. When a supporter remembers a World Cup, the image surfacing in their mind often does not stop at the goals; it also includes a melody played on repeat throughout the tournament.

Britney Spears's anniversary edition reveals another curious thing: a commercial song, after more than twenty years, is placed on equal footing with artistic tracks in the artist's own archive. It stops being 'commercial music' pushed to the margins; it becomes part of the official catalogue. Football is walking a similar path with its own archive: old matches, old kits, old documentary footage are all being re-commercialised.

This relationship can be seen as a cultural transfer market. A song is signed to a brand, loaned out for a campaign, then bought back into the artist's archive once the contract expires. The parties negotiate usage rights, duration and territory, much as a club negotiates a release clause. The only difference is that the asset being transferred here is memory, not a player.

Based on my experience following matches, this shows most clearly in the small details. The playlist played inside the stadium before kick-off is not chosen at random. The advertising reels between halves are not an afterthought. They are designed to create an atmosphere, and that atmosphere sells tickets, shirts and television packages.

In Vietnam, this story is far from unfamiliar. The V-League and youth competitions have long been tied to theme tunes, to sponsor adverts played before kick-off. Clubs such as SHB Da Nang, which I followed for a full season, understand clearly that a match reaches beyond ninety minutes on the pitch. The stands, the advertising boards, the opening song — all are part of one design.

There is a maturing in the way football operates, similar to how teams move from an inspired style to a data system. Both are expressions of the same trend: turning what was once improvised into a process that can be measured, repeated and sold. A commercial song stops being a song; it is an asset with a life cycle, a reach target, a metric.

That is why a 2026 recording, tied to a 2026 commercial, still holds value for re-release in 2026. Its value does not lie in the melody — anyone can write a melody. The value lies in the collective memory it was attached to, and in the audience willing to pay to touch that memory again.

The common reading holds that marriages between football and pop are mere commercial noise, diluting the 'purity' of the sport. Demanding fans often brush them aside as the refuse of the entertainment industry. But that supposed 'purity' never existed. Professional football has been fed by broadcasting money, ticket money and sponsorship money since it was a workers' game.

The real blind spot lies elsewhere: we tend to credit the sport for melodies that were in fact created by brands. We remember a tournament through a song, then attribute the credit to the tournament. The media likewise loves to celebrate an underdog's upset because it drives traffic, while only those who follow a weak team year-round understand the price behind it. Football's viral moments work the same way: we see the surface, not the structure that built it.

The next thing worth watching is not a new star or a new contract. It is who owns the sound of football. As media rights fragment and clubs build their own channels, competition will shift to archives and musical identity. The question for fans, in the end, is who is writing our memory.