One of the biggest stars in country music is entering the sports drink war.
Bodyarmor announced on Monday that singer Carrie Underwood, winner of seven Grammy awards, will be her first celebrity to endorse, as the sports drink maker plans to expand its appeal. As part of the deal, Underwood will have an undisclosed stake in the company and will appear alongside James Harden in Bodyarmor Lyte’s first television campaign, debuting Monday during “The Bachelor”. It will also appear in advertising for Bodyarmor’s SportWater premium product.
“I have probably spent the past 15 years working on myself and falling more and more in love with health and fitness,” Underwood told CNBC. “So it all comes together and I love being able to create this great web of health and fitness things going on in my life.”
Underwood joins an impressive list of brand sponsors, including NBA star James Harden, PGA golfer Dustin Johnson, MLB Mike Trout, professional tennis player Naomi Osaka and soccer star Megan Rapinoe. The late Kobe Bryant was one of the original investors in Bodyarmor and was instrumental in bringing the brand to market.
Underwood said that although she is obviously not a professional athlete (although she jokes that singing can also be difficult physically), she believes it can help open doors for Bodyarmor by reaching a new audience.
“I can talk to working moms and people like me because that’s what I do and what I know,” she said.
“Carrie is what we see in many consumers. … She is a mother and wife. She has two children and is on the run, and leads a busy lifestyle and needs healthy hydration,” said Mike Repole, CEO and founder of Bodyarmor .
Underwood said that one of the attractive things about this business is the fact that she has received an equity offer in Bodyarmor.
“You want to personally invest in the company’s success. It is definitely a motivator to just be there, working and taking your product to as many people as possible, ”she said.
Underwood’s business portfolio has grown rapidly over the past decade. The country singer first gained fame in 2005, after winning American Idol. It sold more than 64 million records worldwide. She appeared on television, in the cinema, is the voice of NBC’s Sunday night football and is also the author of bestsellers.
She has also been very active in the fitness space. Almost six years ago, she ventured into fitness clothing with the launch of CALIA, a training line created exclusively for Dick’s Sporting Goods. The lifestyle brand has had rapid success, becoming the second most popular women’s brand in sporting goods retail. In December, Dick’s launched its first pop-up stores under the brand.
This year, Underwood presented a fitness app called FIT52 in collaboration with his longtime personal trainer, Eve Oreland. It was inspired by Underwood’s passion for an active lifestyle, she said.
The singer’s latest partnership perfectly aligns with her personal mission of ensuring that health and well-being are at the forefront of everything she does.
“I am very lucky to have managed to transform my passion for health and fitness into a business model and personal brand that I can support and be proud of,” she said.
Bodyarmor was founded in 2011 by entrepreneur and beverage industry veteran Mike Repole, who previously helped found Glaceau, the maker of Vitaminwater. The brand is the third largest sports drink on the market, with 13% of sales in the category, according to data from Beverage Digest.
Bodyarmor grossed $ 1 billion in sales last year, up 70% from 2019, Repole said. Sales were helped, in part, by the purchase of a minority stake by Coca-Cola in 2018, which led to greater visibility and distribution.
“They are definitely one of the fastest growing sports drinks for sure,” said Duane Stanford, editor and editor at Beverage Digest. “They have been able to sustain significant growth rates, which has been very interesting.”
Repole’s goal is to dethrone industry leader Gatorade, which is owned by PepsiCo and controls 70% of the market.
“I wanted to be the number one sports drink in 2025,” he said. “I said that in 2011. A lot of people laughed.”
“Gatorade is now five times our size,” he continued. “10 years ago, they were 500 billion times our size. So we closed the gap, from 500 billion to five times our size.”
Making the brand more popular through endorsements like Underwood’s is one of the ways he hopes to get there.
“The other traditional sports drinks don’t come out of the athlete’s box, and you know that Bodyarmor has always been innovative, it has always been different,” he said.
Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the father of CNBC.