Pepsi is out as the sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show. Enter…Taylor Swift? Here’s how that could happen.

Pepsi has a big sponsorship deal with the NFL that goes back close to four decades. That deal has just been renewed again (for somewhere beyond US$2 billion)–but with one notable exception. Pepsi will no longer be a sponsor of the big Super Bowl halftime show.

With up to 100 million eyeballs on that 12-minute event, you can bet that there are plenty of companies willing to fill that gap. Estimates are that the cost will be somewhere around US$50 million.

So who might want to fill that gap? Here’s a suggestion: Coca-Cola. Not only do they have soft drinks, snack foods, water, sports drinks, and restaurant brands to plug, but they also have Taylor Swift. Tay-Tay has appeared in various Coke commercials going back a decade.

What better way for Coke to stick to Pepsi than buy up the halftime rights and plug Taylor into the performance?

Just sayin’.