Why Prime Drinks Are Being Banned At Schools ❌ 🥤
Plus NBA to punish teams for resting healthy stars and Son refuses to touch an iPhone.
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
Every generation, no matter how far back you go, has that one thing that could instantly make any kid the coolest at their school.
For cavemen it was having the sharpest rock, for the Victorians it probably had something to do with top hats, and for most of us, it was a pair of Nike sneakers.
Today, the one item that will instantly make you the playground hero is Prime Hydration…a sports drink.
Prime Hydration has become the must-have item for many under 18s. Some kids now spend their spare time hunting across town for shops that have stock available and have been known to fight for leftover bottles or re-sell them for hundreds of dollars.
So, how has a simple sports drink become the most significant trend?
Prime Hydration began in 2022, the brainchild of Logan Paul and KSI, two Youtubers with a combined audience of more than 40 million (mostly) young followers.
The initial premise was simple. Two rivals coming together for a common fight, to unseat Gatorade as the world's biggest sports drink.
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The duo used their social media channels in the early days to get their fans to join this mission. At the launch, the drinks sold out almost instantly.
Since then, the demand for Prime has snowballed far beyond expectations. In its first year, Prime sold $250 million of stock. Even the most cautious forecast for this year has them doubling that figure.
Dig a little deeper and it turns out that the true marketing genius of Prime may actually have been a coincidence.
In the early days, stocks of Prime were extremely limited (especially in the U.K.). Shops sold out incredibly fast and people queued for hours to get their hands on the latest flavours. Not only did this scarcity make Prime seem more popular, but it also sparked its own social media phenomenon. Kids started to document their searches for Prime on TikTok and someone even created a website to track locations that had Prime available for sale.
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The efforts that people were going through to secure bottles of Prime caught the eye of traditional media who began to report on the hype. This created a virtuous cycle where attention created demand which in turn created more attention and so on.
The second phase of Prime’s rise came when parents started to notice what their children were drinking. Some became concerned with artificial ingredients, while others were annoyed that they were being pressured into buying these drinks for their kids, often at marked-up prices online.
Schools even began to ban Prime from campus, arguing that the drink was a distraction and that some kids felt pressured to spend money on it to be accepted.
In some ways, KSI and Logan Paul couldn’t have asked for a better storyline for their brand. The prohibition only made Prime more attractive to a bunch of rebellious teenagers.
Prime has also used its response to this backlash to help grow demand. After the bans became public, KSI promised to send truckloads of Prime to the schools involved. The hero coming through to save the day from the mean old school teachers.
This is similar to how Red Bull got started, giving away free drinks at nightclubs and universities while the media generated even more attention through explosive headlines about health concerns.
While Prime is riding a wave at the moment, Logan Paul and KSI know that all fads come to an end, especially when your main market is children.
Prime knows it needs to follow in the footsteps of TikTok and Snapchat and invite an older audience. The first sign of this has been the introduction of Prime Energy, a full energy drink that is only for those 18 and above.
You can also see this shift from recent advertising. Before, Prime relied solely on scarcity hype and social media to push sales. Now, it has inked partnerships with teams like Barcelona and Bayern Munich while also sponsoring athletes like Erling Haaland.
This move to sports marketing suggests that Prime wants to reach a wider, more mature audience. At the same time, they are carefully selecting partners that bridge the gap between young and old while maintaining the overall brand image.
Prime still has a long way to go before it dethrones Gatorade, but the finesse with which the brand has navigated its early challenges suggests a bright future ahead.
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🏀 NBA to Fine Teams for Resting Healthy Players
Imagine if PSG were fined for leaving Mbappé on the bench.
Well, that’s exactly what’s happening in the NBA. In a controversial move, the NBA has announced new powers that will allow the organisation to fine any team that rests a high-profile player during a nationally televised game when they are healthy.
A first violation will cost $100k, with fines rising to $250k for a second violation and $1M extra for each subsequent breach.
A player will be considered high profile if they have made the all-star or all-pro teams within the last three years. Players 35+ will be exempt from this rule, which includes names like Lebron James and Stephen Curry.
League chiefs argue that this move is to protect the integrity of the competition, with a recent trend of big-name stars being rested by overly cautious coaches wanting to preserve them for potential playoff rounds.
In reality, this has more to do with money than competition. The NBA is about to re-negotiate its TV contracts and will hope that assurances of more game time for star players will help them maximise the income.
🪧 Writer’s Strike Boosts Ad Revenue in Sport
The Hollywood strikes have paused almost all TV and film productions and pushed millions of entertainment-hungry viewers toward sports. We have been saying for weeks that this new attention will be a boost for sport and now we have some numbers to back it up.
Disney has seen a 17% increase in ad revenue for NFL games (set to reach $585M this season).
CBS has sold 90% of its ad inventory for the next Super Bowl in Las Vegas and is expected to surpass the record $600m that Fox earned for last year’s event.
Super Bowl 58 is tipped to be by far the biggest event on U.S. television this year, thanks in some part to an audience that is feeling starved of entertainment.
🐭 Disney to Stream Animated NFL Game using Toy Story Characters.
Disney has just announced that it will be showing a special live stream of the Atlanta Falcons vs. Jacksonville Jaguars game on Oct. 1 which will be animated in real-time to show Toy Story characters in place of the actual players.
This isn’t the first time that Disney has created an animated livestream for kids. Earlier this year, Disney animated an NHL game with characters from Big City Greens. This stream attracted an audience of more than 700k, the most of any alternative stream to date.
Nickelodeon actually pioneered the idea of animated live streams for sports with slime-focused broadcasts in 2021. The channel has something similar planned for Super Bowl 58.
These streams are not just an attempt to show off new technology, they also help hook younger kids into sports by giving them an easier route with more identifiable characters in an easier-to-digest visual setting.
📱 Social Media Madness
👟 11k runners disqualified from Mexico City Marathon.
Yes, you read that right. 11k runners (that’s ⅓ of the entire field) were disqualified from the recent Mexico City Marathon for failing to pass certain checkpoints. According to reports, runners were seen using cars, bikes, and public transport to cut sections of the 42km course.
This is not new for the Mexico City marathon. 6k runners were denied their medals in 2017 after allegations of cheating, with another 3k suffering the same fate in 2018.
It is believed that people are tempted to cheat at this marathon because a good result at this particular event makes it much easier to qualify for other main events across the globe. Also, the organisers at Mexico City have gold label status from World Athletics which means they run their event with the strictest standard possible.
📱 Son Heung-min Refuses to Touch an iPhone.
A recent video of Tottenham star Son Heung-min has gone viral after he appeared to refuse to take a selfie with an iPhone. In the clip, he is seen holding a fan’s Samsung phone to take a picture but when another fan hands him her iPhone Son refuses and asks her to take the picture instead.
Apparently, this loyalty comes from a clause in Son’s sponsorship contract with Samsung that prohibits him from being seen touching rival phones like the iPhone.
If you want a selfie with Son, you need to own a Samsung!
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