On November 1, 2021, Coca-Cola announced it was buying the remaining 85% of BodyArmor, the sports drink brand Bryant had backed years before, in a $5.6 billion cash deal. He had died in 2020, but his early bet survived. Most athletes sign an endorsement deal, smile for the camera, and collect the check. Kobe Bryant, for one, became an owner.
Bryant invested in the brand early on. BodyArmor was founded in 2011 by Mike Repole and Lance Collins. By 2021, it had become the No. 2 sports drink in measured retail channels, trailing only Gatorade, made by PepsiCo, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. ESPN reported that he invested about $6 million in March 2014 for around 10 percent of BodyArmor. He then became part of the company’s Board of Directors, and wrote and co-directed a BodyArmor ad campaign in 2018 featuring four of the brand’s athlete endorsers.
Coca-Cola joins the team
In 2018, Coca-Cola acquired a 15% stake in the brand, with an option to acquire the entire stake at a predetermined discount. The Wall Street Journal reported that the 2018 investment was $300 million, and that the company was valued at the time at around $2 billion. By the time the 2021 deal was announced, BodyArmor had been growing at a rate of approximately 50% and was generating more than $1.4 billion in retail sales, a growth trajectory that helps explain why Coca-Cola was willing to pay several times that annual sales figure to take full control. The $400 million figure is from The Wall Street Journal, not from any statement by Coca-Cola, which did not say what Bryant’s estate received. ESPN reported his stake was worth about $200 million following the 2018 deal, a return of more than 30 times his original investment. If the $400 million estate figure from the 2021 sale is accurate, that’s closer to a 67-fold return on his original $6 million.
That access to Coca-Cola’s distribution system was reported at the time to have helped speed up BodyArmor’s growth. That’s a good return, but it’s a reported number, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. Bryant was also credited in Coca-Cola’s release. The Journal cited anonymous sources, and neither Coca-Cola nor BodyArmor gave an amount. Endorsements correlated with increased sales, both in absolute terms and relative to rival brands. And sales and stock returns soared with every major achievement by the athlete . But sales effects showed diminishing returns over time. There’s one important limitation. The research looked at endorsement deals, not ownership stakes like Bryant’s. So it can’t prove he was the reason BodyArmor blew up.
Co-founder and chairman Mike Repole said BodyArmor would not have achieved its success without Bryant’s vision and belief, according to that release. “The Economic Value of Celebrity Endorsements,” published in the Journal of Advertising Research , signing an athlete endorser brings a positive payoff for a firm, according to Anita Elberse and Jeroen Verleun’s 2012 study .
